News

Seven years after Jerry Brown was elected mayor of Oakland in part on a promise that his “10K Initiative” would lead to a retail revival in the city’s downtown, the area where the housing component has been most successful has yet to see the promised commercial development.

The City of Oakland’s 10K Housing webpage says that in Brown’s inaugural address, he “proposed a four-year goal of attracting 10,000 new residents to downtown Oakland as a way to revitalize the physical, economic, and cultural environment of the area.” It adds that “the 10K Housing Initiative is not just about housing—it is also about creating an environment that is conducive to residential development, through the transformation of the downtown into a more livable space that incorporates streetscapes, parks, commercial, retail, and other amenities.”

Earlier this year, ABC news reported that 5,800 of the 6,000 residential units needed to meet Brown’s 10K goal have either been completed or were under way. Of these, more than 1,100 are contained in seven separate loft developments in the area east of Broadway between Jack London Square and the 880 freeway. Another two hundred units in the same area have either been given city approval for construction or are in the design review phase. Last spring, the San Francisco Chronicle said Brown was making “dramatic progress in his ambitious (10K) plan.”

But along the commercial corridor of Lower Broadway, where Brown’s promised retail revitalization would presumably follow the residential successes, progress has not been so dramatic. In some instances, it appears to have gone backwards.

Of 26 commercial addresses between Jack London Square and Fourth Street on Broadway, four appear to be long-term vacancies, with windows papered or boarded over and one of them, the old On Broadway club near the the corner of Fourth, sporting a message on the marquee that reads “Thank You. Bye.” Three other commercial addresses in the same stretch are closed and undergoing renovations, with one of them, the old Bluesville club at Second, sporting a For Lease sign. Two of the office complexes in the area have had vacancies for several weeks.

A number of office complexes along Fourth Street between Broadway and Franklin also sport “for lease” signs, monuments to the collapse of the dotcom boom.

In addition, two of the operating establishments in Lower Broadway—Carpenters Union Local 2236 and the Secrets Adult Superstore porn shop—would not appear to fit the mayor’s commercial revival vision.

Third District Councilmember Nancy Nadel, whose district includes the western portion of Lower Broadway and who is running for mayor in next year’s election, said that several commercial projects are “in the pipeline” for that area, but most of them are in Jack London Square itself.

Nadel said that developers have proposed a project next to the historic Last Chance Saloon in the square “that will look a lot like the Ferry Building in San Francisco,” with a large first floor store and “smaller concessions” on the upper floors. East of Jack London Square, she said, another development is planned for the old train station, with a parking structure and a grocery store.

But Nadel added that proposals do not always translate into finished projects.

“You can promise a lot of things,” she said, “but it’s hard to attract retail into these areas, particularly department stores,” which economic observers have said is one of downtown Oakland’s critical needs. Nadel said it is her understanding that “no department store in the country is expanding at this point.”

The only major development currently in the works for Lower Broadway itself between Fifth and the Embarcadero, according to Nadel, was a controversial high-rise housing and commercial complex on the 2nd and Broadway property currently occupied by the Jack London Inn. The proposed project has received criticism both for the fact that it would violate the height limits in the city’s Estuary Plan as well as not including room for low-income residents.

“It’s not a mixed-income proposal,” Nadel said. “Inclusionary zoning hasn’t been a priority of Mayor Brown.”

The Lower Broadway corridor is considered an important part of Oakland’s downtown development because it connects Jack London Square—considered Oakland’s commercial gateway—with the Old Oakland development area, Chinatown, and Oakland’s downtown proper. But Oakland officials have long been faced with two problems in trying to complete that connection. The first is the Alameda County Probation Center and the Alameda County Social Services Agency, two dirty, dreary block buildings sitting across Broadway from each other between Fourth and Fifth streets. The second is the Highway 880 freeway overpass, a gloomy, uninviting, dangerous-looking tunnel under which pedestrians must walk to get between Lower Broadway and the rest of downtown.

To West Oakland Commerce Association Vice President Steve Lowe, the problem of the area beneath the overpass, at least, would not be hard to overcome.

“They had a similar problem in Sacramento with the Old Sacramento development separated from downtown by the freeway overpass,” Lowe said. “They solved it creatively by building walkways and other amenities.”

Lowe, who has spent several years trying to goad city officials into developing Lower Broadway and the adjacent produce district, where he lives, said the real problem is that the area is not high on the city’s priority list.

“For years, the emphasis has been on development of Jack London Square itself,” Lowe said. “For a long time, that was under the authority of the Port of Oakland, and the Port was under pressure to fill up the retail spaces on the square. There wasn’t much interest in walking across Embarcadero and looking at the rest of the area.”

Lowe said that attitude appears to have continued under private developers Jack London Partners, which bought the retail core of Jack London Square from the Port of Oakland several years ago.

“They appear to still see Jack London Square as separate from Lower Broadway,” Lowe said. “But when you talk to visitors to Oakland, they consider the ‘Jack London area’ as both areas, and because of the problems with Lower Broadway, they don’t think the area is doing well. The city has a responsibility to help develop the square, but also Lower Broadway. They don’t see it as yet.”

Lowe, who has long advocated that the Lower Broadway development should center around restoring and preserving the area’s historic properties, says that one of the reasons the success of Brown’s 10K has not yet translated into commercial success is because the mayor does not have enough people on his staff with retail experience.

“Most of Jerry’s economic advisors believe in official and residential development,” he said. “They just don’t have a good feel for retail and the specific requirements needed to put together a successful retail district. That’s one of the major areas the new mayor will need to address.”ö

Should Berkeley charge developers a fee to help alleviate traffic generated by their projects? And, if so, how much?

The purpose of the fee is to create programs, services and infrastructure improvements designed to reduce overall vehicle trips not only at individual project sites but throughout the city.

The proposed Transportation Services Fee, as originally proposed by Assistant Public Works Director Peter Hillier, would replace the fee charged by the city from 1985 to 1997, when a city attorney’s ruling suspended it because the ordinance failed to comply with provisions of the state Mitigation Fee Act.

Hillier’s proposal called for a $4,687 fee for each average car trip generated over the 20-year life of a project and is designed to recoup 20 percent of the city’s actual costs of mitigating the impacts of new traffic.

Adam Millard-Ball, the transportation consultant hired by the city to prepare the study from which the proposed fees were drawn, said that compared with other Bay Area cities, the proposed assessments were “on the high side for high-impact uses, in the mid-range for offices and near the low end for housing.”

But when the Berkeley Transportation Commission looked at his proposal Thursday, they voted to raise the sum to 25 percent of total costs and cut back on the kinds of projects that Hillier’s staff had suggested be offered lower fees because city policies favored them.

They called for reducing fees to 35 percent of that 25 percent for affordable housing projects and childcare centers, while exempting altogether second units added to residential properties.

Transportation Commissioner Sarah Syed had also called for reductions on student co-op housing projects, but her motion died for lack of a second.

The highest fees would be assessed on businesses like fast food eateries that generate more trips by fast turnover of their customers. More expensive restaurants, which generate a slower turnover, would be assessed less.

The measure approved by the Transportation Commission would assess projects approximately $6,084 for each new daily trip, based on a 20-year project life. Similar fees are charged by other Bay Area cities, and the Transportation Commission’s baselines would put Berkeley near the top of the list.

The staff report offered examples of fees on various projects.

One, a “West Berkeley Supermarket Complex” clearly based on the proposed new West Berkeley Bowl, calculated a $1.88 million fee for 386 new daily trips—a figure that would rise to $2.35 million under the Transportation Commission’s revisions.

The fee would not apply to the new Berkeley Bowl project because it is already in the development pipeline and the fees can’t be levied retroactively.

Fees for a mixed use affordable housing, office and retail project in downtown Berkeley generating 68 trips per day—clearly based on the David Brower Center and apartments—would be assessed at the reduced rate for the housing units, while paying the normal rates for other aspects of the project.

For a mixed-use residential and commercial project downtown generating 95 daily trips, the fee would be $577,998, compared to $462,398 if assessed full fees under the staff proposal.

Even assessments at the lower rate suggested by staff worried some members of the Planning Commission when they examined the plan during their Wednesday night meeting.

“In concept it’s a great idea, but it (the original $4,687 figure) seems like a high number to me,” said Planning Commissioner Helen Burke.

“If these kinds of fees are imposed, what is the impact on prospective development?” asked Chair Harry Pollack. “Some thought ought to be given that.”

Commissioner Rob Wrenn—who also serves as chair of the Transportation Commission—said the fees are “quite modest” and unlikely to have any impact.

Other cities have higher fees, Wrenn said, noting the examples cited in the staff study. “Also, how much more development can we have without addressing the impact? It’s not like it’s an unmitigated good to have more development.”

Planning Manager Mark Rhoades said the City Council wants to hold a public hearing on the fee—the only public hearing at any level on the proposal—in December.

Pollack held the issue over to the commission’s Nov. 30 meeting, giving its members time to prepare questions and comments before the proposal is heard by the council.

No members of the public commented on the proposal before the Planning Commission, but two developers were on hand at Thursday’s Transportation Commission meeting and ready with their comments.

Aran Kaufer, a former Landmarks Preservation Commission member who worker for developer Patrick Kennedy and now has his own development firm in San Francisco, appeared along with Brendan Heafey of Ruegg & Ellsworth to voice their concerns.

“I would rather see a fee on automobile users in Berkeley,” said Kaufer, suggesting no fees for single-vehicle households and escalating fees for each additional vehicle.

Commissioner Marcy Greenhut disagreed. The per-car fee, she said, “doesn’t target impacts but penalizes people who are already here.”

Calling the commission’s proposal a disincentive, Kaufer said, “There’s already a trend in Berkeley where people in the middle can’t afford to live here.” Kaufer also said the fee should be examined in conjunction with other development fees levied by the city, which would reveal that “suddenly, Berkeley is the most expensive city” for development.

Kaufer urged the commission to hold off action until it could examine the cumulative impact of the fees when added to all the others.

Millard-Ball had earlier stated that, “apart from childcare and affordable housing fees, Berkeley doesn’t have that many fees” when compared with other cities.

“I really think it is motivated by misdirected anger against the University of California, which will generate most of the new traffic” and can’t be charged any impact fees by the city, he said.

Even if developers include affordable units under the state and city density bonus regulations, “they will never be able to recover it all.”

Heafey said the fee would be a disincentive to infill development in Berkeley and would send would-be residents to the suburbs in search of housing.

“A trip-based fee penalizes our sale tax bases by penalizing restaurants and other businesses,” Heafey said. “The bottom line is that it will be felt in higher costs for housing and higher prices in our commercial businesses and restaurants.”

But the commission focused on the fee’s goal, which is to provide the funds for services and projects that will encourage fewer car trips, whether at the project in question or elsewhere in the city.

Among the programs that could be funded would be shuttle services, improvements in bicycle corridors and lanes, Eco Passes, carpools, increased signage and other measures aimed at increased bus travel, expansion of bicycle facilities at BART stations and bulb-outs on transit corridors.

City employees are driving less and using more alternative forms of transportation, according to a survey unveiled at Thursday night’s Transportation Commission meeting.

Drafted by Associate Transportation Planner Kara Vuicich, the survey was sent to 1800 city employees between May 24 and June 17. A total of 327 staffers responded, an 18 percent rate of return.

“The survey indicates significant improvements” in employee commute behavior, Vuicich wrote, with most of the positive changes correlating with the implementation of the city’s EcoPass and Commuter Check programs.

Between 2001 and this year, the rate of city staff responding to the poll who drive to work alone dropped from 47.4 to 36.4 percent. The drive-alone rates for city workers are well below the rates for all Berkeley workers, with a 54 percent drive-alone rate, and far lower than Alameda County workers in general with 71 percent.

BART commuters rose from 12.9 to 19.7 percent responding, while bus riders jumped from 6.2 to 13.8 percent. Bicyclers rose from 4.9 to 6.8 percent and walkers from 4.7 to 6.5 percent.

The only drop was seen in car- and van pool commutes, which fell from 12.8 to 7.7 percent.

The survey also offered a look at where Berkeley city employees live.

Of those responding to the poll, 39.4 percent live in the city, 14.1 percent live in Oakland, 5.8 percent in Richmond and 5.5 percent in San Francisco, followed by Albany and El Cerrito at 4.9 and 4 percent respectively.

The others are distributed throughout the Bay Area, ranging from Alameda, American Canyon and Antioch to San Pablo, Vallejo and Walnut Creek.

Of the total, 70 percent live in areas served by AC Transit, and 40 percent live in the same ZIP code as a BART station.

More than one in five employees lives within two miles of work, while 19.9 percent live 20 or more miles away, with the rest falling in between.

Nearby residents favor bicycles and shoe leather (or rubber) for commuting, while distant workers rely the most on car and van pools and BART.

Nearly half of the workers (46 percent) use the city’s $29-a-month transit subsidy.

Approximately 240 employees regularly use the EcoPass program, up from 189 in 2002.

The top three reason for workers who drive are:

• Because alternatives would lengthen their commute times (59 percent).

• Because they work late or irregular hours (58 percent).

• Because it’s too far to bike or walk (55 percent).

Half of the drive-alones said they’d be willing to try BART as an alternative, and 48 percent said they’d consider using a bus, while 31 percent said they’d be willing to try telecommuting.

Asked what incentives would encourage them to consider other modes of transit, 68 percent said financial subsidies would be a stimulus, 61 percent said a boost from the $20 now available for BART would do the trick and 59 percent said free bus passes would do the trick.

Based on survey results, Vuicich listed seven possible city measures that could encourage higher rates of alternative transit uses:

• Continuation and expansion of current programs and policies.

• Consideration of expansion of the EcoPass to include BART along with utilization of TransLink smart cards that would apply to both buses and BART.

• Increased subsidies to workers who use transit systems other than BART and AC Transit.

• New incentives aimed at drive-alone employees who live less than five miles away.

• Improved storage facilities and other incentives to encourage more bike ridership.

• New van and carpools for workers who live 20 or more miles from work.

Mark Treeker, an organizer with the organization The World Can’t Wait, led a mock detainee through Sproul Plaza Monday afternoon. Participants rallied against Boalt Hall Professor John Yoo’s role in drafting U.S. legal memos that the group says led to torture in places such as Guantanamo Bay and Iraq.

The protest was also a lead-up to a nation-wide rally the group is organizing for Nov. 2 to protest the anniversary of the re-election of George W. Bush.

Sunsara Taylor, a national organizer with the group, said that The World Can’t Wait is asking people to walk out of their jobs and school that day and gather at rallying points in 60 sites across the country, including a noon rally at the Civic Center Plaza in San Francisco followed by a march.

“People need to start putting their bodies in front of this juggernaut,” she said. “People are too willing to turn their heads and go to work like normal, go to school like normal.”

City Councilmembers will face a relatively light agenda when they meet tonight (Tuesday), including a proposed revision to Berkeley’s “by-right” home addition ordinance and two competing resolutions on the demolition of a UC Berkeley landmark.

Councilmembers Betty Olds and Gordon Wozniak have proposed changes to the existing ordinance that allow homeowners to add 499 square feet to their homes “by right.”

In a two-page item submitted to their fellow councilmembers, Wozniak and Olds said that they offered the amendment “to reduce the confusion (and) tension between neighbors and litigation” that have resulted from the current ordinance.

As the law now stands, owners can build additions of under 500 square feet without notifying neighbors, who often protest to the city and file suits over lost sunlight and views.

The Olds-Wozniak measure would allow owners to add 700 feet to their ground floors with a zoning certificate—which doesn’t require notice—but requires an administrative use permit, which requires notice, for all additions to higher floors.

Because the ordinance currently doesn’t specificy just how high a “story” can be—enabling additions of 20 feet or more in height—the new ordinance would specify a limit, though they didn’t offer a number.

The resolution calls on the council to direct the Planning Commission to come up with specifics and recommendations within 120 days.

Competing resolutions focus on the proposed demolition of the Bevatron on the grounds of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

Once the world’s most powerful particle accelerator and the source of internationally acclaimed discoveries, the facility has since been eclipsed by other larger and more specialized accelerators and has been decommissioned.

At issue is whether to demolish the giant machine and the building which housed it or to preserve them and use the cleanup funds to restore contaminated ground water at the site.

Councilmembers Gordon Wozniak and Linda Maio have offered a pro-demolition resolution designed to support earlier, similar measures passed by the council, while the Peace and Justice Commission’s resolution calls for preservation and water cleanup.

Since the property belongs to the U.S. Department of Energy, neither resolution would have binding effect.

Wozniak is also the author of a proposed revision to the city’s ordinance for posting public notices of proposed changes in land use.

The measure offers no specifics, other than to recommend that the city manager tell the Planning Department and Planning Commission to consider modifying requirements for post notices of proposed land use changes in a way that doesn’t contribute to urban blight by creating “unnecessary clutter on street light poles and other public places.”

The measure was inspired by city postings that followed the spring cleanup of notices, flyers and other detritus from streetlight poles and other places in the Elmwood business district.

Also on the City Council agenda:

• Second reading votes on the previously approved condominium and soft story building ordinances and the zone and planning changes required before the Gilman Street Playing Fields can be built;

• A $492,172 addition to the city’s contract with Cale Parking Systems USA to add more of the new parking pay stations in the North Shattuck Avenue and Southside areas;

• A measure to allow the city to add six Toyota Prius hybrid cars to the city fleet from San Francisco Toyota;

• A resolution authorizing the city manager to negotiate a five-year contract with the Alameda County Housing and Community Development Department to provide shelter for Berkeley’s homeless over the next five years, with costs not to exceed the $747,120 provided by a federal grant.

• An appeal by neighbors of a Zoning Adjustments Board action approving a three-car garage addition to a home at 1732-34 La Vereda Road.

Berkeley planning commissioners will get their first chance Wednesday to ponder rezoning West Berkeley to attract car dealerships.

The proposal, pushed by Mayor Tom Bates to keep car dealerships and their hefty sales tax revenues from fleeing the city, has been strongly opposed by some West Berkeley business owners and artisans.

While no action will result from Wednesday’s discussion, commissioners will receive a city staff report on the proposal and hold a preliminary discussion on their suggestions.

The panel will also hold a hearing on another controversial West Berkeley project, the proposed second store and warehouse for the Berkeley Bowl.

The same activists who are opposing Mayor Bates’s proposal to bring car sellers onto their turf have blasted the supermarket project as both a source of additional traffic on highly traveled Ashby Avenue and as the latest commercial intrusion on land zoned for manufacturing and light industrial uses.

The commission will open the 7 p.m. meeting in the North Berkeley Senior Center, 1901 Hearst Ave., to public comments as part of the public review process for the project’s Draft Environmental Impact Report. For a look at the Berkeley Bowl environmental document, see www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/planning/landuse/Heinz/DEIR/default.htm.

ZAB considers new condominium and retail project

On Thursday, the Zoning Adjustments Board will face a ful agenda, with the largest single project being the proposed two-building, five-story condominium and retail project at the northwest corner of University Avenue and Martin Luther King Jr. Way.

Developers Hudson McDonald, LLC have proposed 186 condominiums and 4,000 square feet of ground-floor commercial space plus 71 parking slots in a basement garage for the site now occupied by a mini-mall whose tenants include Kragen Auto Parts.

City staff is recommending that unless the developers redesign the project, ZAB should turn thumbs down.

ZAB already gave the project a highly unfavorable review on April 28, panning the design by Kirk Peterson, whose most notable Berkeley buildings were Patrick Kennedy’s Gaia and Bachenheimer buildings.

Hudson and McDonald teamed with Kennedy on many of his projects before setting out on their own, and the Kragen project was Kennedy’s originally.

As currently proposed, plans call for a five-story project with the bulk of its mass along MLK.

Neighbors along Berkeley Way to the north have raised strenuous objections, pointing to the building’s shadow effects on their own homes and to the parked cars it could bring to their already crowded street.

Kennedy’s Panoramic Interests first applied for a permit in September 2002, and the document was deemed complete last Dec. 9 after clearances from the Landmarks Preservation Commission.

The city’s Design Review Committee panned the project, faulting its massive appearance from the street, a lack of open space, and relatively limited commercial space.

In April, ZAB members indicated they weren’t inclined to grant the eight zoning variances required and declared that the project abused the state density bonus ordinance, which allows larger-than-standard structures for projects that offer affordable housing.

Members also said the project didn’t include enough parking.

The city staff report prepared for Thursday’s meeting lists nine grounds for denial, including one that holds the project “would be detrimental to the health, safety, peace, morals, comfort or general welfare of people who live or work nearby and that it would also be detrimental to adjacent property owners.”

The report, by Senior Planner Steve Ross, calls for a redesign either to four floors or adding a fifth floor stepped back from the fourth along Berkeley Way, more setbacks along Berkeley Way, an increase to 156 parking spaces, increased commercial floor area and larger courtyards and open space.›

Ignacio Chapela, the UC Berkeley professor whose tenure battle came to symbolize the movement to protect scientific research from corporate interests, withdrew his lawsuit against the school last week, but promised to continue to “expose a deeply damaging miscarriage of the university’s mandate.”

Chapela sued the UC Regents last spring for wrongfully denying him tenure because of his opposition to the university’s deal with pharmaceutical company Novartis. A month after he filed suit Chapela was granted tenure, but he did not withdraw his suit.

Chapela said he hoped the suit would expose the mishandling of his tenure case but came to realize, after meeting with his lawyer and supporters for six months, that he must find other means to that end.

“The claims I made are still valid,” said Chapela in an interview, “but I realized people will get the image that I got what I wanted and am still whining. That’s the opposite of what I wanted, which was to create a chink in the armor of this massive system that is UC.”

Chapela said he will not abandon his efforts to hold the university accountable. In a statement he said, “I look forward to continue challenging, in the best forums that I can find, what I believe is a corrupt and illegitimate takeover of the public university away from its public mandate.”

Now, however, he faces the world from a new vantage point.

“My decision to take tenure was my decision to become an insider when I wasn’t,” Chapela said, “And that brings in a whole set of conflicts of interest.”

“He’s not uncomfortable being out on his own,” said Michael Pollan, a science and food writer who teaches at UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism. “It took a certain strength being in opposition, and in some ways being accepted is harder for him.”

Chapela, 45, with a cherubic face beneath a shock of gray hair, became a hero to some and an agitator to others when he loudly opposed the College of Natural Resources’ contract with Novartis, a company where he had worked years earlier. He generated international debate on the issue of genetic engineering when he co-authored a controversial article about GMO-tainted native corn in Mexico.

Chapela sees himself as an outsider, a “mutt,” he said. Born in Mexico City, he received his B.S. from Mexico’s Universidad Autonoma and then completed a doctorate in mycology (the study of fungi) in Wales. Chapela worked for Sandoz Agra, a pharmaceutical subsidiary of Novartis in Switzerland and then for the United States Department of Agriculture and the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, D.C. He took his current position at UC Berkeley in 1996.

“I am not a thoroughbred academic in any possible way,” said Chapela. “I am committed to doing science that has public relevance, and the only way I can do that is if I am heard and seen by the public.”

Chapela said his new ambition is to create a system of interactive maps that chart the presence of genetically modified organisms (plants which contain genes from other plants or animals, such as herbicide-tolerant soybeans) in crops around the world. Funding the maps will require generating venture capital.

“I will have to make sure I am not doing the very thing I have been complaining about other people doing,” Chapela said.

The transgenic maps would document the consequences of genetic engineering, he said. Chapela said he realized that such a project could upset his supporters. If, for example, he identifies transgenic material in organic fields, he could embarrass and anger organic farmers.

“I could make many people unhappy,” Chapela said. “But that doesn’t mean I shouldn’t do it. That is why I’m tenured, to ask this kind of question.”

In response to accreditation warning letters sent out by the Western Association of Schools and Colleges (WASC) earlier this year, the Peralta Community Colleges District and its four member institutions released mandated reports last week outlining progress made in addressing WASC’s criticisms.

“I’m confident that we’ve dealt with their concerns,” said Peralta Public Information Officer Jeff Heyman.

Last January WASC sent out virtually identical warning letters to the presidents of Laney, Merritt, Alameda, and Vista colleges as well as to Peralta Chancellor Elihu Harris, citing the failure of the Peralta District to implement a district-wide strategic educational and financial plan, the failure of the district to implement a plan to fund the district’s long-term health care benefit liability, and interference of the district’s Board of Trustees in the day-to-day operation of the district.

The WASC complaints concerning Peralta’s Trustee Board were mostly aimed at individuals no longer connected with the district. Last November, two months before the WASC letters were released, four new members joined the seven-member Peralta Trustee Board, replacing trustees who chose not to run for re-election.

Since that time, the trustee board has instituted increased oversight over district activities, but has stressed that they do not believe such oversight constitutes interference.

The January WASC warning letters were a follow-up to reports on the colleges made by WASC accrediting evaluation teams last November, and cited what WASC called “the district’s failure to satisfactorily address the recommendations made to it” in those earlier reports.

The letters were signed by Accrediting Commission Executive Director Barbara Beno, who served as Vista College’s president for 12 years, and before that served as director of research and planning for the Peralta Community College District.

Although the complaints made in the WASC warning letters were against actions by the district office and the board of trustees and not the colleges themselves, if the complaints weren’t addressed, WASC could pull accreditation from the four colleges.

Heyman said that each college convened special committees to address WASC’s concerns.

“They’ve been working pretty hard on this,” he said. “We’re all pretty impressed with what they’ve done.”

Heyman said that the next step in the process will be for WASC to revisit and re-evaluate the Peralta Colleges based upon the information contained in the progress reports.

A month ago, for the first time in 40 years, Barbara Morita walked into a church in El Cerrito and sat quietly in a pew.

Many regular churchgoers use their time at church to drift off, to forgive, to try to forget. But Morita went in with a specific goal. She prayed for the people she had left behind in New Orleans.

“There was one point where our convoy had stopped on the freeway and there was this man running after the convoy pushing an old lady in a wheelchair, and we had to keep going,” she says. “We knew that if we stopped and started giving care that we would never make it to the Superdome.”

Morita is a physician’s assistant at Berkeley High School. When she is not treating the fevers and rashes of the teenage population, she travels to disaster zones with the CAL-6 Disaster Medical Assistance team and provides care for people whose lives have been shredded by natural disaster, war, or terrorism.

Last month, Morita was in New Orleans.

On the way to the Superdome, Morita says, her medical team was besieged with people asking for help. Many of the faces are now a blur, but the elderly woman on the side of the highway and her desperate companion made a lasting impression on Morita.

After working at the Superdome for 20 hours, the medical team left the next day for Baton Rouge and drove back along the same freeway.

“When we came out, she was there in her wheelchair on the side of the freeway,” Morita says. “She was dead.”

Morita thought of the woman in church last Sunday. She asked for peace for her, she says, “and for the man who committed suicide, for all of the people who were in pain who did not get help, all of the people who suffered so much.”

Morita works out of a small, tidy office in the Berkeley High Health Center. She is surrounded by the buzz and urgency created by a building full of teenagers with all their crises, real and imagined. Inside her office, all is calm, her paperwork organized in neat piles on her desk, sun streaming in through the window. In the window, Morita has hung a print her co-workers bought her when she returned from New Orleans. Morita holds it up and traces the black lettering: “It’s the Chinese character for peace and harmony,” she explains.

Morita is a soft-spoken, gracious woman. She dresses casually, in T-shirts and loose slacks, and wears her long black hair pulled back by two barrettes. Her face is tanned and lined and she wears no makeup. She is still and serious but laughs easily. Above all, she is steady. She has a kind of stillness about her that many people spend years in an ashram trying to achieve.

During several long conversations about her time in New Orleans, Morita is interrupted many times. Nurses come in and out to get pills and shots. The phone rings, the receptionist interrupts. A girl is here, she has an odd rash, can Morita see her? One afternoon, Morita has just sent a girl in anaphylactic shock to the hospital for treatment. Berkeley High students usually get taken to Children’s Hospital. But the girl’s aunt called, panicked, unable to locate her.

Morita gets on the phone and starts making calls—Children’s first, then Kaiser, then Alta Bates. She is measured and patient with everyone she deals with, never becoming exasperated, even when she has to repeat the girl’s name multiple times. She finds the girl at Alta Bates. She calls the aunt. More soothing.

It’s a kind of calm you have to possess, Morita says, if you are going to do the kind of work she does. She has spent much of her adult life treating people in pain. Morita grew up in El Cerrito, did well in school, and enrolled in UC Berkeley for pre-med. But after one year at UC Berkeley, Morita dropped out of pre-med, demonstrated against Vietnam, worked for a farm workers’ union and went to school to become a physician’s assistant. She married, had three girls, and worked for a number of community clinics—Asian Health Services, La Clinica de la Raza and Health Care for the Homeless. She gravitated toward the vulnerable and financially strapped: Mexican janitors with no insurance, immigrant Asian hairdressers with no workplace coverage.

“My motivation has always been that I do believe that health care is a basic right,” Morita says. “And in the United States it is obviously not, it is a commodity that you purchase. I wanted to do my part to make it accessible to people who cannot otherwise afford it.”

When Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast in late August, Morita was struck by the images of the suffering and, apparently, the abandoned. She packed her bags, kissed her husband and girls goodbye, and headed south.

A month later, she is still experiencing the aftershocks.

When Morita’s team arrived on Aug. 31, they organized themselves on the upper level of an ice arena next to the Superdome that had been converted into a makeshift medical treatment area.

“When we got there, all the medical tents on the lower level the previous team had been using were flooded and contaminated with fecal matter,” she says. “We couldn’t use the tents, so we set up camp two floors above.”

Morita says the conditions were appalling and almost impossible to work in.

“There was no lighting,” she says. “There was no air movement. The toilets were backed up. It was horrible and hot and stuffy. The place was filthy.”

Morita says the patients she saw were a mixture of critically injured and less serious cases, or, as she calls them, the “walking wounded.”

“We had a baseline of more minor complaints—people needing medication, diabetes treatment, walk-in clinic type patients,” she says. “And then on top of that we had the National Guard carrying in people that were unconscious, who were having seizures, heart attacks and who had collapsed.”

Morita also saw patients who had been severely beaten and one man with gunshot wounds. Five women were in various stages of labor. In the 20 hours Morita was there, one baby was born.

“It had the feel of total chaos,” she says.

Helicopters stopped removing critically ill patients on the morning of Aug. 31 because snipers were shooting at them, Morita says. Buses did not arrive until Sept. 2, so critically ill patients languished for two days.

“There were so many patients that needed care that we could not give them,” she says. “I felt helpless and so frustrated and angry that people were stuck in this situation.”

After working at the Superdome, sleeping about three hours and chewing on half a Power Bar, she headed out to the airport at Baton Rouge. The situation at the airport was much more organized. There was a triage center, and patients were put into one of three areas: red for critically ill, yellow for less urgent, green for minor.

“There was also what we call an expectant area, which was curtained off. That’s where people were placed who we were expecting to die.”

A lone minister tended to these patients, offering comfort and last rites.

“It was a dignified place for them to die,” Morita says. “It was quiet and calm. But it was very sad because they were so alone.”

Since returning to Berkeley on Sept. 9, she has had insomnia and nightmares and says, “the images come back at strange times.”

The hardest part, she says, was treating patients, then leaving them and not knowing what happened to them. She still thinks about individual patients.

One woman had a terrible skin infection: “nasty and extensive and wet and smelly.” Morita had no way to properly clean it and lacked the proper antibiotics to treat it. “She needed lab tests and good wound care and the right medication. I hope she got the right treatment,” she says.

There was a little boy in sickle cell crisis that they could not care for properly. There was a 12-year-old boy who could barely speak. His mother was concerned for his mental health and would not take him back into the Superdome; she says he had seen dead bodies and violent acts.

“I can’t take him back in,’ she kept saying. He’s seen too much,” recalls Morita.

Morita met with the other members of her team a week after returning home to Berkeley. They too were having a hard time adjusting to everyday life again.

“More guys cried than women,” Morita says. “Many of them cried and said they had felt so helpless down there, unable to help people.”

One former soldier-turned-medic was having flashbacks of traumatic experiences in combat zones, she says. “A couple of the guys, what they saw and felt brought them back to war experiences. One guy was very vividly re-living being in Somalia.”

One nurse Morita worked with was unable to return to work for a week after returning.

But most bounced back fairly quickly, she says: “You keep putting one foot in front of the other. You just keep working.”

Morita says her experience in New Orleans gave her perspective on what real discomfort and pain are.

“Since being back, I have a lot less patience for twitter,” she says. “You know, people complaining about ‘it’s too hot in here.’ My philosophy is, if you and the people that you love are alive and well, it was a good day.”

Berkeley police are investigating the possible sexual abuse of a 6-year-old Oregon Street boy by an 11-year-old boy. Officers were notified by staff at Children’s Hospital in Oakland on Oct. 16 after the 6-year-old’s mother brought the child in for care.

Further details are not available, said police spokesperson Officer Steve Rego.

High school arrest

Officers arrested a 15-year-old Berkeley High student Wednesday on suspicion of receiving stolen property that was reported stolen by another 15-year-old student. Both are males, said Officer Rego.

Drug bust

Police arrested a 19-year-old man for selling cocaine near the corner of 62nd and King streets at 5 p.m. Wednesday along with his customer, a 46-year-old Richmond woman, who was charged with possession.

Strong-arm robbers

A strong-arm robbery team consisting of a young heavyset African American woman and her slimmer Caucasian partner are suspected in a series of robberies in Berkeley that occurred Wednesday and Thursday.

The first report came at 8:30 p.m. Wednesday from two 18-year-old women who were strong-armed out of their purses near the intersection of Channing Way and College Avenue. They told officers the women fled in a four-door sedan they identified as a white Dodge Neon.

The second call came two minutes after midnight.

A 19-year-old woman told officers that a pair matching their description had tried to take her purse as she was walking two hours earlier in the 2700 block of Piedmont Avenue.

The same pair may have been involved in a similar purse robbery just after 11 p.m. Friday in the 1600 block of 62nd Street, said Officer Rego.

Tobacco and more

What might have resulted in a simple citation for possession of tobacco by a minor turned into an arrest early Thursday afternoon when the 17-year-old female in possession of the dirty weed decided to resist and found herself facing the second and more serious charge of interfering with peace officers.

The incident occurred near the corner of Shattuck Avenue and Allston Way.

Bank robbery

Police are looking for the man with shoulder-length dreadlocks who walked into the Wells Fargo Bank at the corner of Shattuck Avenue and Center Street just before 4 p.m. Thursday wearing a bright orange road worker’s vest and truck driver’s hat.

The African American robber presented a demand note and walked out the door with cash. He has not been apprehended, said Officer Rego.

Mother stabber

A 16-year-old female was arrested late Thursday afternoon after emergency room personnel notified Berkeley Police that her mother had arrived with a stab wound.

No further details were available.

Unlocked door

Residents of a dwelling in the 2100 block of Cedar Street learned the value of locking doors when they discovered Friday morning that person or persons unknown had taken advantage of their oversight and absconded with two laptop computers, an iPod MP3 player and a digital camera.

Miscue

Police arrested a 32-year-old Oakland man on suspicion of battery and brandishing a deadly weapon after he used his fist and a pool cue to beat a 15-year-old male in the 2000 block of Kittredge about 4 p.m. Friday.

Purse heist

A teenager strong-armed the purse away from a woman walking in the 1800 block of Ward Street just before 4:30 p.m. Friday. The victim said the fellow was wearing a white cap and a black shirt with a white collar and a ring pattern in the shoulder area. She estimated his age at between 15 and 18.

Luggage Center robbery

A scruffy-looking unshaven fellow with long shaggy dyed black hair betraying its graying roots walked into the Luggage Center at 2221 Shattuck Ave. just after 8 p.m. Friday, produced a pistol and demanded cash.

His loot in hand, he fled out the back door.

He is described at between 38 and 42 years of age, with shrunken cheeks and a medium build, standing about 5’9”.

Another gun, another purse

A gunman robbed a 35-year-old woman of her purse as she was walking in the 2900 block of California Street just after 11:30 p.m. Friday.

Spat takes nasty turn

A disagreement between employees of Golden Gate Fields took a nasty turn Saturday morning when a 19-year-old worker decided to attack his 44-year-old colleague with a rake.

The younger worker was booked on suspicion of assault with a deadly weapon.

Drugs and booze

Police arrested a 67-year-old Modesto man on a variety of charges including felony hit and run and felony driving under the influence of narcotics after he struck and injured a pedestrian near the corner of Dwight Way and Waring Street just after 7 p.m. Saturday.

Information on the victim was unavailable.

Stabbing

Nurses at the Summit Alta Bates Hospital emergency room notified police after a 19-year-old man walked into the emergency room bleeding from a stab wound shortly before 11 p.m. Saturday.

The man told police he’d been stabbed with a box cutter an hour earlier near the corner of Sacramento and Prince streets. He was unable to describe his assailant in any detail.

Possible gun

Spouting threats and making like he had a pistol in his pocket, a man in his late 20s robbed an 18-year-old woman of her purse as she walked along Parker Street near College Avenue shortly before 8:30 p.m. Sunday.

Another heist

A UC Berkeley student was robbed by two men about 1:10 a.m. Monday near the corner of Shattuck Avenue and Addison Street, UC Berkeley Police reported.

Your short summary (in the Oct. 21 article “Council Adopts Condo Conversion”) of the City Council’s Oct. 18 action regarding 2901 Otis St. was incorrect. The City Council did not deny neighbors’ appeal of the Zoning Adjustments Board decision approving the “pop-up” conversion of the small Victorian cottage currently on the site into a three-story, three-unit condo and the conversion of the cottage’s rear yard into a paved parking lot. Neither did the council deny the developers’ appeal of the Landmarks Preservation Commission’s conflicting decision designating it a structure of merit. The council voted unanimously to set both appeals for public hearing at its Nov. 15 meeting.

Robert Lauriston

•

UNITED NATIONS

Editors, Daily Planet:

It is good to see an account of recent disaster relief work by United Nations humanitarian agencies, including that being done right here in the U.S. (“Accentuate the Positive on U.N.’s 60th Anniversary,” Oct. 21).

This year, for the first time ever, 50 percent of the traditional Halloween trick-or-treat for UNICEF funds will be designated for children in the U.S. UNICEF boxes are available at the UNA Information and UNICEF Center, 1403-B Addison St., back of Adronicos on University Avenue in Berkeley.

Dorothy P. Wonder

•

CLARIFICATION

Editors, Daily Planet:

In your summary of City Council activity regarding 2615 Marin Ave., the comments could be interpreted that the project was approved one foot lower than the Zoning Adjustments Board’s previous approval and remanded back to ZAB. The project was approved with the one-foot reduction. Period. It was not remanded back to ZAB. Please clarify this point.

David Richmond

San Francisco

•

“REDSKINS”

Editors, Daily Planet:

Clearly Ms. Garrett is wrong to suggest that other Native-Americans should not be insulted by phrases they find offensive, but she does not. They are offended; now what are we going to do about it?

Coincidentally, a Cherokee woman who is a nursing administrator at NIH in Washington D.C. told me that the term “Redskin” was invented to describe natives who had been flayed; that is, who had been tortured by Europeans by having much of their skin cut off. While I cannot judge the historical accuracy of this claim, or Ms. Garrett’s, if many Native Americans believe this then the term is well beyond insulting to them.

Robert M. Marsh

•

SHARING IS GOOD

Editors, Daily Planet:

A corner store, a hot tub, a box to share clothes, neighbors that talk with one another, a music venue, a bulletin board, parties, public gathering spaces, artist colonies, community gardens, playgrounds. These are our treasures. These are the blooming of our community, the places where we meet others and share. They need to be honored, protected and improved.

I am frankly alarmed at this malignant attitude that attacks our collective culture with a desire for silence and isolation. If you are new to Berkeley, try it on, meet people, help others. Don’t try to “clean it up” so it resembles some sterile gated community. What impoverished souls will be born by isolating ourselves inside houses or offices with no noises from outside, no conversations with strangers, no way to share with someone different. Urban living is by nature loud and complex. I believe we should strive for quality sound created by our collective closeness; bird songs and happy children playing, the soft and regular hum of the train or BART, brooms on the sidewalk, a conversation, hellos, meows, a violin.

Our society is everyone. How the man on the sidewalk is doing is the measure of the health and joy of all. We cannot better this health by putting down others, ignoring people, hoping they go away. For they are us. We must not let the part of us that shares and cares go away. For that is the beauty of our kind. It takes grace and courage, patience and hope to open up to improving, not destroying for lack of perfection, our collective living.

Support the local liquor store and encourage them to carry some organic produce and plum jam from the teenagers at the community garden down the

street. Talk with your neighbors. Enjoy differences, respect the creativity of others. Thank them for the bench or fruit tree or bulletin board that they share with the neighborhood. Be nice. Maybe give a buck to the guy on the street.

And support the free-box in People’s Park. That park is still a special place where sharing happens. What it needs to be better is you! Bring something to share, have a picnic or a game, plant a flower, talk to a stranger, make it better.

Let a thousand sharings bloom.

Terri Compost

•

NEW DOWNTOWN PLAN

Editors, Daily Planet:

Here is an idea for the Berkeley downtown that the university and the city planners are working on. Why not fill the whole area with 15-story condo buildings? Then the price of a 1,000-square-foot luxury condo will drop from $400,000 to $200,000. The new residents will then be able to afford to eat at the fancy downtown restaurants and perhaps attend the theater. And in thanks to the development dream team of Bates, Wozniak, Moore and Maio, the new residents will become life-long voters and campaign donors. And in thanks to UC Berkeley for the new downtown, they will become life-long Bears sports fans., Go Berkeley! Go Bears! Rah! Rah! Rah!

George Tyler

•

INSTANT RUNOFF VOTING

Editors, Daily Planet:

The real solution to election problems is to count our first, second or third choice, whichever has widest support. The East Bay IRV movement was lead by Cal students in 2002-03, and your continued reporting is vital.

This Tuesday, the California Senate elections committee will host a forum titled “Instant Runoff and Ranked Choice Elections: Will They Lead To A Better Democracy?” Participants will include Berkeley City Councilmember Kriss Worthington. The forum will be held at 10 a.m. at the Elihu M. Harris Auditorium, 1515 Clay St. in Oakland, with a rally at 1 p.m. This is an historical event for local and state-wide election reform leadership and progress. It’s only a short bus or BART ride to support real election reform state-wide.

Sennet Williams

•

WILLIS-STARBUCK CASE

Editors, Daily Planet:

In P.M. Price’s opinion piece of Oct. 18, she labels my conclusions as to Meleia Willis-Starbuck’s culpability in her own death as “unjust.” No reasons are provided for this statement. Instead, Price seems more interested in attacking the Cal football players who may have been involved in this tragic situation, the integrity of the Cal football program, the University of California as an institution, and organized sports in America in general. He makes accusations about players withholding information, not coming forward etc. Is Price privy to the investigation of the case? How does she know about this?

I’m not privy to the “facts” of the case, other than what I’ve seen in the media. However, let me refer to the statements made by Danielle Youngblood, a close friend of Willis-Starbuck who witnessed the events of July 18, as reported immediately afterward in the San Francisco Chronicle. She noted that the altercation began when Willis-Starbuck and her friends declined to “party” with a group of young men, who then used immature, insulting language (“bitches” appears to have been the derogatory term). An argument ensued, with the women explaining to the young men why such language was inappropriate. According to Youngblood, the men then apologized for their language and Willis-Starbuck continued to talk with them as her “brother” Christopher Hollis arrived and made the fatal shot into the crowd that killed the girl.

At this point we don’t know who claimed that Hollis was asked by Willis-Starbuck to “bring the heat,” or if that even occurred. Hollis’ lawyer says it happened, and I guess we’ll find out at Hollis’ trial. But it does seem clear that Willis-Starbuck grossly overreacted by bringing a gun-carrying thug into a situation which in fact was not threatening, and lost her own life as a result. There’s nothing “unjust” about that conclusion.

I don’t know why Price is trying to shift the blame for this tragedy to football players, other than to put up a smokescreen so that Willis-Starbuck’s memory won’t be “tarnished.” In any case, the “analysis” offered by Price is facile, to put it mildly. I may be wrong, but I don’t see sports entitlement to be related in any significant way to this story. However, other avenues are worth exploring, such as a degraded “hood” culture where calling women bitches is common parlance and guns are used without a second thought to settle the most minor disputes.

But we can’t have that in Berkeley, can we? Why, it can only be racist to suggest it.

Price made one correct statement in her piece: “We bring our life experiences and biases to every situation. Objectivity is more of a goal than a reality.” Perhaps Price ought to work a little harder toward that goal.

In his Oct. 14 New York Times column, “Questions of Character,” Paul Krugman lamented the media’s failure to discern the true character of President Bush. Krugman observed that in 2000 the press portrayed George as an “honest, likable guy” and in 2004 as “a strong effective leader.”

By blaming his fellow journalists, the columnist glossed over the reality that for the past six years the American public has been assaulted daily by a permanent political campaign; one whose morality is not that of Jesus of Nazareth but instead that of Machiavelli of Florence. If Lorenzo de Medici was the Italian political theorist’s prince, then George W. Bush is Machiavelli’s president.

The media certainly shares some of the blame for five years of dreadful leadership. Why did pundits on both coasts ignore the warnings of Molly Ivins and Lou DuBose who had seen Texas Governor Bush in operation? Why did the press fail to listen when Ivins and DuBose noted that George W. had been a failure as a CEO? When they observed that his touted Christian faith appeared to stem from convenience rather than conviction? Why did the media look away when Ivins scoffed at Bush’s claim to have been the Environmental Governor, noting that Texas had the worst pollution in the nation?

The answer is that journalists were among the millions of Americans who were taken in by a presidential campaign scripted from the pages of Niccolo Machiavelli’s The Prince. The father of Realpolitik famously observed that “politics have no relations to morals,” and this aphorism serves as the motto for George Bush and company.

From the moment that Bush decided to run for president, his staff—principally Karl Rove and Karen Hughes—fabricated a image of George W. as a successful CEO, born-again Christian, effective governor, and all-around nice guy.

Bush played to these themes when he accepted the Republican nomination, depicting himself as “a uniter not a divider,” setting out his goals in a business-like manner, and vowing to, “usher in an era of responsibility … to uphold the honor and dignity of the office to which I have been elected, so help me God.”

The cornerstone of Bush’s propaganda campaign has been the assertion that he is a decisive, seasoned executive able to confront problems and make tough decisions. As our first MBA President, CEO Bush promised to bring the good ship America back on course. Famed management theorist Peter Drucker once observed that a successful CEO does not start by asking, “What do I want to do?” but rather “What needs to be done?” Instead, CEO Bush focused on his own agenda from the moment he took office and, in the process, ignored America’s most pressing problems. This myopia was tragically apparent in the invasion of Iraq and the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

Political historians acknowledge that there are two competing standards used to evaluate any American president. One is to grade him strictly as America’s chief executive. The other standard views the president solely as a politician. From the Machiavellian perspective, Bush’s primary goal was to increase his power, rather than to confront America’s problems—to maintain the appearance of leadership while strengthening his position.

Each president confronts a variety of challenges. In his 2000 convention acceptance speech, Bush identified two perennial issues: bolstering America’s defenses, and strengthening the citizenry. Since taking office George W has been confronted with many new tests, including a faltering economy and global climate change.

On all four of these challenges, Bush the CEO has not fared well. America continues to spend far more on national defense than does any other nation, yet our overall security has deteriorated. Rather than strengthen the American family, the administration’s policies have weakened it. Bush the 43rd inherited a strong economy and a surplus, yet now there is stagnation and a steadily increasing deficit. Despite overwhelming evidence that global warming threatens the planet, the president stubbornly insists that there is no scientific consensus on the subject and, therefore, supports business as usual.

On the other hand, George W. has been remarkably successful as a politician. He was elected to two terms and kept his primary campaign promises: he’s cut taxes, brought his version of accountability to elementary education, massively increased funding to the military, and shrunken entitlements. His core constituencies strongly support him, and Republicans control Congress.

If Niccolo Machiavelli were to evaluate the Bush administration, he would find much to approve of. Machiavelli paid great attention to appearances and advised his prince to “strive to make everyone recognize in his actions greatness, spirit, dignity, and strength.” An essential ingredient was steadfastness, “he must insist that his decisions be irrevocable.” Machiavelli advised his prince to use cunning and “always [employ] religion for his own purposes.”

History will not judge Bush the CEO kindly. Rather than being seen as a responsible president, George W. will be viewed as someone who relentlessly avoided the crucial issues of his era, to the lasting detriment of the nation. On the other hand, Bush the politician, will gain high marks from all those for whom Machiavelli’s teachings remain the final word in effectiveness.

Richard Nixon once remarked, “You can’t fool all of the people, all of the time, but if you fool them once, it lasts for four years.” Amazingly, George W. Bush managed to bamboozle the electorate twice and now, despite his fallen ratings, we’re stuck with Machiavelli’s president.

Bob Burnett is a Berkeley writer and activist. He can be reached at bobburnett@comcast.net.

In Tony Mirosevich’s non-fiction class at San Francisco State University, we are constantly asked to explore the soft, wavy lines between truth and fiction, between what is real and what is not real. For a recent assignment we were instructed to write about a personal memory and combine it with someone else’s memory of the same event, or write our remembrance of a singular occurrence at several junctures in our lives, filtered through time, emotion, and experience.

It wasn’t difficult for me to find a memory that fit all the above requirements. Years ago I published an essay about my dad having a mid-life crisis at the age of 32, and buying himself a sports car to cope with a mortgage, a wife and three small children. In the essay I described the make of the car, (a Ford Thunderbird), the color, (off-white), and the design (two bucket seats up front and a hard, bench-like seat in the back flanked by two porthole windows).

The purchase of that sports car caused enormous havoc in the life of our growing family. Even at the age of 7, I was aware of my mother’s angst and anger over the T-Bird. She thought my dad was an idiot for not buying her a practical Chevy station wagon, one she could drive to the A&P without worrying about her children’s comfort or her own suburban image.

The interior of the Thunderbird was low, dark, smoky, and mean, and the round gauges on the dashboard glowed an ominous green, reminding me of Russian Sputniks: dangerous, foreign, and prying. Inside, mounted on the doors and console, were ashtrays and places for highballs, should one want to smoke and drink while driving to the country club or grocery store. The most annoying characteristic of the Thunderbird was the backseat because something large, mysterious, and possibly essential to the engine rose up in the middle, causing whoever had to sit there to be uncomfortable and a tad put out. Hours before any car trip, no matter how insignificant, my brothers and I would argue about who would sit on the awkward bulge.

There were slamming doors, bloody noses, and missed important social engagements. More than once my brother Danny climbed into the car hours before a proposed errand to ensure that he would not get the middle position.

Finally, my mother suggested divorce and my father took the T-Bird away and brought home a boxy boring station wagon that had only six ashtrays (the proper number for a family of five in 1959), no portholes, and no place for highballs or travelers.

Immediately after the essay appeared in print, I received angry e-mails from Thunderbird fans all over the world. They informed me that I was mistaken about the design: Birds with round windows did not have backseats!

I dismissed the complaints as misguided fanaticism. I remembered those portholes. They were an important part of my childhood development and identity. Sitting in the backseat of the Thunderbird, looking out a round window, shaped my view of the world and my place in it.

I sent the essay to my father and brothers for confirmation. Danny e-mailed me back and claimed he did not remember the Thunderbird. Brother Bill was more emphatic. What in hell are you talking about? he asked. But my father’s response was the most disturbing. Susan, he wrote in an e-mail, we never had a T-Bird with portholes. You must be confusing our “square bird” with the “little bird” my friend Doc Thomas had. His was black. It didn’t have a backseat, but it did have those ridiculous windows.

Could it be possible that I never looked out a porthole window when I was a child? Did I only look into Doc Thomas’s oval windows and wish that I was looking out? Four years ago I would have sworn on a stack of Bibles that my psyche was determined, in part, by those unique circular windows, and that everything I have said, done and thought since were influenced by my childhood round view of the world. It’s hard to accept that I am, in fact, just a common square-window person, masquerading as someone who is classy, cool, chic, and circular.

We all know that street crime is a problem in Berkeley. While we may differ as to its causes, we all understand that the economic transformation currently underway in South Berkeley is a huge contributor to that problem. Economic dislocation and gentrification are the realities of South Berkeley. In many neighborhoods, economic “gaps” between residents contribute to generate tension and suspicion. Newly arrived, white neighbors are offen are offended by the conditions they find in these neighborhoods. Working closely with police to identify “suspicious” people and “drug dealers,” neighborhood groups are finding “creative ways” to “combat” drug dealers. Apparently, this includes holding an 75-year-old woman responsible for “allowing” drug activity in her neighborhood.

Lenora Moore is an elderly African American woman who was born and raised in Berkeley. In 1919, Lenora Moore’s grandmother bought a house at 1610 Oregon St. Many years later, in 1963, Ms. Moore purchased the house from her grandmother and has lived there ever since. She has six sons, 36 grandchildren, 10 great-grandchildren and a host of cousins, uncles and other family members throughout the Berkeley/Oakland area.

Ms. Moore’s family grew up in boom-town Berkeley, a Berkeley that was a land of opportunity because of the wartime shipbuilding and growing manufacturing sector. The good times did not last. By the 1970 and ‘80s the economic gap between whites and blacks was growing again. Gone were the days of good paying union jobs and the chance to learn a trade. The economy was changing, but it did not seem to provide for the working class residents of the city. Instead, with fewer opportunities and more temptation to participate in the illegal economy, street level drug dealing grew in many parts of the city.

Today, the neighbors of Ms. Moore contend that her relatives sell drugs, play loud music, leave litter around and are generally difficult to live near. A raid of the Moore house recovered some drugs in the room of one middle-aged son and a handgun. The son went to jail for this, but now the neighbors figure that Ms. Moore should be punished as well. They accuse her of failing to stop drug activity not only by a relative who she allowed to stay with her, but all drug activity”in the area.” They don’t seem to care whether Lenora had any part in the drug activity or not or whether she was even aware of it. They believe that the family itself attracts undesirable people to the neighborhood and their real objective is to get Ms. Moore to sell her house. This was made clear to Ms. Moore in letters from Neighborhood Solutions, Inc. on behalf of the neighbors.

Unfortunately, the neighborhood group bases much of its analysis on observations made from afar and based on heresay and generalizations. The Moore family is close to 100 people or more in this area. These are people who have lived in Berkeley for their entire lives. Ms. Moore’s house is widely known because the network of family and friends that have known and visited that house is huge. While the neighbors maintain that there is “drug activity” day and night, it is also true that there is a lot of traffic coming and going from the house because so many relatives feel that they have a connection to the house. Not every gathering of African Americans is for the purpose of drug dealing as the case presented by the neighbors might suggest.

The fact that the law allows neighbors to punish an elderly woman for failing to do what the city’s Police Department could not is beyond absurd. It is racist and wrong. This is a woman who goes to work everyday and struggles to keep her family together. Her record of service to this community spans 60-plus years. She started programs for children, clinics for women, services for the elderly and a huge variety of public service projects. To the degree that members of Ms. Moore’s family have need of drug rehabilitation, therapy, education and financial assistance, they should be given this help. Perhaps the situation would not have become so tense if someone had recognized that Ms. Moore was struggling and doing her best to keep up with the demands of so many grown children and grandchildren. What Lenora needs is help not punishment.

Rather than the adversity that a courtroom situation promotes, the neighbors and Ms. Moore would be best served by a problem-solving, relationship building approach. The fact is that Ms. Moore is the social net for her family. She continues to struggle to feed those who are hungry; take in the children if the mother is not able to parent; give rides, make calls and try to help her relatives to get their lives together. The stability she provides could also be said to offer the possibility of rehabilitation.

If the neighbors succeed and Ms. Moore is forced deeper into debt, what will have been accomplished? South Berkeley will still have a drug problem and the neighbors will be no closer to achieving what they claim to want. Make no mistake; the neighbors have complaints and they deserve to have these complaints heard. Yet, if we truly have a mind for justice—real justice—then a woman whose greatest crime is loving her family and trying to help them get on their feet would not be facing the possibility of poverty and homelessness.

Andrea Prichett is a member of CopWatch and a South Berkeley resident.

Smart students! Nobel prizes! Touchdowns! Is this what the “blue and gold” means to you? If so, you may not realize that along with the good comes a dark side that dominates the lives of those who live near UC. If gold reflects the prestige and glamor of UC Berkeley, then blue represents the bruised and distressed Berkeleyans who underwrite that glamor.

It is UCB’s immediate neighbors who bear its major burdens: traffic, parking problems, congestion, noise, litter, almost continuous construction impacts, and other problems caused by some misbehaving students. Meanwhile, taxpayers citywide subsidize UCB with over $11 million per year. The damages will increase if the UCB adds 2.2 million square feet of new construction and more than 5,000 new campus users.

Berkeleyans for a Livable University Environment (BLUE) is an organization formed about two years ago by residents of neighborhoods near UCB, in response to increasing damage to Berkeley’s quality of life caused by the university. BLUE believes that the university and the citizens of Berkeley must have a relationship of equity and mutual respect. BLUE acknowledges the many positive ways in which the university contributes to the community, but BLUE does not accept the status quo, in which the costs of university activities are disproportionately borne by the city and the surrounding community.

Now UCB and LBNL are poised to expand and increase their “take.” The City of Berkeley should do everything in its power to protect the city’s residents from the increasing physical and financial burdens of these two institutions. Reducing the damage done to Berkeley residents by the university, and achieving a fair relationship between the city and the university, is vital to the future livability of our city.

BLUE is committed to creating a livable environment for everyone. Sadly, to the disbelief of informed observers, the city recently signed an agreement with UCB that permits all existing damage to continue, that does nothing to prevent further damage, and which even reduces Berkeleyans’ ability to create and protect our own downtown. This is why four members of BLUE are suing to stop the agreement.

For those who are not familiar with the “blue” that accompanies UC’s “gold,” BLUE highlights the following major areas of community damage:

Transfer of the commons

The “commons” are the shared resources of our urban environment that belong to us all. Over the decades, the university has expropriated more and more of Berkeley’s commons. These include roadways, where over-intensity of UCB use increases traffic, municipal costs, and emergency access hazards; on-street parking spaces, which are removed from the city’s commercial and residential use and transferred to UCB; sidewalks, which are unnecessarily taken from public use during UCB construction; historic resources, which have been compromised and destroyed by UCB projects; open space, a limited resource that insofar as possible should be maintained for the pleasure of all Berkeleyans; aesthetic resources, including views, mature trees, and freedom from noise pollution—all damaged by UCB; and natural resources such as groundwater and creeks, which UCB activities have diminished and contaminated.

Financial impacts

Intensely used, tax-exempt properties owned or leased by the university create a large hidden fiscal impact on Berkeley taxpayers. Services provided to UCB cost Berkeley taxpayers over $11 million annually, and other universities similar to UCB pay their host cities up to $14 million per year. Imagine the more beautiful and livable city we might have today if we had received $11 million per year for the past 30 years to improve downtown, Southside, and our poorer areas of town. With our limited resources and many vital civic projects going unfunded, Berkeleyans cannot continue to support this large and wealthy institution. The city should use all available means to garner substantial (not token) reimbursement; this is the ethical arrangement. Instead, UCB reimburses the city for about 10 percent of its cost burden.

Parking

Parking is a scarce resource around the core campus, where UCB monopolizes the parking commons for its own use, and local residents pay the price in increased hardship, traffic, pollution, noise, time, and money. All day neighborhood streets near the campus function as UCB parking lots. In addition, several times per week thousands of visitors flock to venues such as Memorial Stadium, the Greek Theater, Zellerbach Hall, and Haas Pavilion, filling up neighborhood parking spaces. UCB should take steps to minimize and mitigate the parking problems it causes its neighbors.

Traffic

The continuing increase in the number of commuters to both UCB and LBNL has greatly increased city traffic congestion. Access to both requires crossing the city, often through residential neighborhoods. Major special event traffic can bring many streets to a standstill. Significant changes are needed in UCB’s and LBNL’s transportation policies to remove UC traffic from neighborhoods throughout Berkeley.

Walkability

Fortunately, many UCB students, staff, and professors live near and walk to campus—which is one reason maintaining the livability of near-campus neighborhoods is vital. As UCB grows, we must protect and enhance pedestrian pleasure, safety, and access to the campus. Increased walkability will improve the neighborhood character of residential streets near campus (through trees, pedestrian lighting, “eyes on the street,” and crime reduction), and the economic vitality of commercial areas (through more local shopping, street seating, etc.). This will help increase property and sales taxes. Additionally, good walkability can help reduce auto use and ownership.

Construction impacts

The city currently allows UCB to commandeer neighborhood streets, sidewalks, and parking spaces, rather than requiring UCB to use its own available resources. UCB projects last several years, and parking and traffic problems, noise, dust, and other unpleasantness are not the only problem: UCB construction has caused long-term residents to move out of the neighborhoods where they are most needed. When proposed university construction begins downtown, businesses will die without adequate parking, vehicle and pedestrian access, and a pleasant shopping environment.

Memorial Stadium

Memorial Stadium is a beloved structure, but its location creates substantial adverse impacts. These include city-wide traffic problems; parking problems that extend over a mile from the stadium; event noise that permeates local neighborhoods; and patron behavior problems (noise, litter, public drunkenness, and petty delinquency) far beyond the stadium’s surrounding neighborhoods. Straddling the Hayward Fault and attracting crowds of more than 70,000 into a crowded area with narrow streets, the stadium poses a danger to spectators and neighbors alike in the event of a major earthquake, fire, or evacuation. UCB’s determination to “modernize” the stadium and intensify use around it is wrong-headed, but if it goes forward, the university and the city must take extraordinary measures to reduce its damages and dangers.

Strawberry Canyon

Berkeleyans depend on Strawberry Canyon for open space, recreation, and its aesthetic contribution to our urban setting. Leaving aside any new university construction, ongoing UCB and LBNL activities in the canyon contaminate the soil and groundwater, which then moves downhill to pollute more of the city, including Strawberry Creek. Again, the university transfers its damages to city residents.

So when Cal goes for the gold, let’s not forget who’s paying for it. We are.

To support BLUE’s efforts to maintain quality of life in Berkeley, write to blue@igc.org. To support the lawsuit, make checks payable to “Law Offices of Stephan C. Volker” and mail them to 1 Hazel Rd., Berkeley, 94705.

David Baker is a Cal alum, a 43-year resident of Berkeley, and a founding member of BLUE.

Josiah Royce (1855-1916) was born at 207 Mill St. in Grass Valley, high in the Sierra gold country, and spent the first 10 years of his life there. He remembered the town as full of weather-beaten old shacks and rusting machinery. Years later his wife described it as “a place that was nothing in a situation that was nowhere.”

This gives too bleak a picture. During Royce’s childhood Grass Valley had the richest gold mines in California. They yielded a million dollars a year for almost a decade, remained productive for another hundred, and supported a population of 20,000 souls.

Grass Valley’s best-known residents in the early days were Lola Montez, the woman who cast a spell on Bavaria’s king and captivated Gold Rush audiences with her “Spider Dance,” and her little protege, Lotta Crabtree, an actress said to have influenced Mary Pickford’s vigorous dramatic style.

When Lola Montez had had enough of Grass Valley, she moved on to new adventures. The Royce family, having failed to make its fortune, also moved on, to San Francisco where it continued to fare poorly. But at fourteen years of age, Josiah began to display extraordinary talents. He completed a year’s work in mathematics in a matter of days at Boys’ High School, and devised his own logarithm tables. His stunned teachers arranged for him to finish high school at the University of California.

College days

The university Royce entered was a small, struggling school in Oakland. It didn’t move north into the barren Berkeley hills until his junior year. Nevertheless, his undergraduate years were fruitful, and he later said of them:

“The principal philosophical influences of my undergraduate years were: 1. The really very great and deep effect produced upon me by the teaching of Professor Joseph Le Conte—himself a former pupil of Agassiz, a geologist, a comparatively early defender and exponent of the Darwinian theory, and a great light in the firmament of the University of California of those days; 2. The personal influence of Edward Rowland Sill, who was my teacher in English during the last two years of my undergraduate life; 3. The literary influence of John Stewart Mill and Herbert Spencer, both of whom I read during those years.”

By the time he graduated some of his professors believed he should have further schooling. The university did not offer a program in philosophy, his chosen field; for that he needed to go to Europe, if he could find financial assistance. The professors interceded with the university’s president, Daniel Coit Gilman, and he induced some anonymous Berkeley businessmen (still unknown today!) to provide a fund for Royce. The young man wrote to Gilman, “Your influence in getting me this assistance is going to be the making of my whole life.”

Royce studied at Heidelberg, Leipzig, and Gottingen, immersing himself in the brilliant idealistic speculations of Immanuel Kant and G.W.F. Hegel, and developing deep confidence in his own ability. After completing his doctoral degree at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore, he had to face the fact that he’d spent years preparing for a career that didn’t exist: there were no philosophy departments in American universities. While he was stuck in this quandary, William Rowland Sill reached out to him with the offer of a position teaching English in Berkeley.

1878—Back to Berkeley

Royce knew he could do great philosophical work and he sensed that Berkeley’s intellectual isolation might stop him from doing it. He accepted Sill’s offer reluctantly. His fears were realistic. Sill wrote to Gilman (now at Johns Hopkins), “He will do excellently well here... only, he must not stay too long in the wilderness for his own good.”

As soon as Royce arrived in Berkeley he began writing to Gilman and others, imploring them to help him find work in the East. These letters give us an unguarded insight into Royce’s situation and an unvarnished picture of academic life in Berkeley’s early days:

“Here in the university I am after all much alone. It is not what it used to be when I was a student. The classmates are scattered, of course; and to be an instructor is to look on old scenes through new glasses. My own students are plastic, sometimes bright, often amusing; but they are no companions. The members of the faculty are cordial enough; but all old teachers are self-absorbed men, with plans of their own. And I have plans of mine too, of course; and so we live for the most part to ourselves, each as happy as he finds it convenient to be, and without much love for communion with the others.” (September, 1878)

“At Berkeley, as you doubtless know, we live on in a very quiet way, without much to make us afraid, and also without much encouragement, kept alive by our own enthusiasm when we have it, and allowed to come as near death as we choose if we find enthusiasm irksome. The public says very little about us and knows, I fear, even less.” (September, 1880)

“Our regents, a miscellaneous and comparatively ignorant body, are by fits and starts meddlesome, always stupid, not always friendly, and never competent or anxious to discover the nature of our work or of our ability.” (May, 1882)

When William James offered him a temporary appointment at Harvard, Royce accepted immediately. He remained there for thirty four years. But he had not wasted his time in Berkeley. He had been pondering the themes of his first two books, The Religious Aspect of Philosophy (1885) and California (1886).

The Religious Aspect of

Philosophy

In The Religious Aspect of Philosophy Royce addressed the religious thought of his time which, he considered, “has reached a position which arouses the anxiety of all serious thinkers...” He hoped to reinvigorate it by offering a new philosophical proof for the existence of God.

He presented this proof in a long, complex argument which is not easily summarized. Briefly, then: he argued that our ability to distinguish what is true from what is false, or in error, depends on a source of truth which is independent of us and eternally consistent. He described this source as “an infinite unity of conscious thought to which is present all possible truth.” This consciousness, the Absolute, is God.

Most of us find this notion of the Divine far too abstract and remote, but Royce offered it earnestly as a philosophically secure (and non-denominational) foundation for theology. In the long run, he hoped, it would strengthen religious belief and, ultimately, be of assistance to people in need, “the poor and lonely, the desolate and the afflicted when they demand religious comfort, and want something that shall tell them ... how to take up once more the burdens of their broken existence.”

Royce also argued for the existence of “moral insight” rooted in recognition of the reality of other human beings. A person who rises above his own subjective concerns to an understanding of the moral insight will know it means “...not merely, ‘Love thy neighbor as thyself,’ but ‘Insofar as in thee lies, act as if thou wert at once thy neighbor and thyself.’ ‘Treat these two lives as one life.’”

He thought “the great aim” must be to produce the moral insight in as many people as possible, so as “to prepare the way for ... the highest good,” thus bringing about the “sense of community, the power to work together, with clear insight into our reasons for so working.” “This,” he concluded, “is the first need of humanity.” It was the theme of his next book.

California

In 400 densely written pages California (1886) portrays the destruction by the Americans of California’s pastoral, feudal Mexican society, and the conflict within the Americans between their best and worst impulses. Royce saw these events, which were then very recent, as flowing from failures to act in obedience to the moral insight.

As always, his purpose was constructive. He wanted to illustrate how after a period of anarchy, lessons were learned and applied. He found the triumph of the early Californians in the painful and protracted efforts of decent men and women to build homes, businesses, and a workable, just civil government. In Kevin Starr’s words, “The road back from anarchy demonstrated what Royce felt was the very essence of the moral act: the transcending of present evil.”

Some critics have faulted Royce’s interpretation of his material. Charles Chapman, for example, said Royce “selected materials from the standpoint of a previously determined thesis, and made sweeping generalizations from inadequate sources.” He saw California as a moralistic screed written through the lenses of “puritanical glasses.” Even so, it survives as an essential work on the period. And one of its major points—that California is a land where diverse populations must find ways to exist together—is still germane.

The Grass Valley-Josiah Royce Library

Today the beautiful town of Grass Valley honors Josiah Royce, Lola Montez and Lotta Crabtree, without quite knowing who any of them were. The Lola Montez house has been refurbished (and occupied by the Chamber of Commerce); Lotta Crabtree’s is nearby, still a private residence. Royce’s home is long gone, its location marked by a historical placard. It was replaced in 1916 by a public library which, in a gesture which seems genuinely appropriate, has recently been re-named “The Grass Valley-Josiah Royce Branch” of the Nevada County Public Library.

Modern Italian theater began in the 16th century with the first commedia dell’arte troupes. Drawing upon a vast reservoir of fools from every village and town in Italy, they created the well-known masked characters of the lovers Pierrot and Columbine, the old dotard Pantaloon and his constant antagonist the ridiculous Doctor, the intriguer Brighella, the braggart Captain, cowardly Scaramouch, Punchinello, source of the English Punch, and, the most famous clown of all, Harlequin.

The descendants of these zanies can be found on every stage in Europe, but they ring true because they can also be found in our lives and in ourselves.

In Jaques’ “All the world’s a stage” speech in As You Like It, William Shakespeare makes a catalog of some of these characters, naming one in particular, “the lean and slippered Pantaloon with spectacles on nose and pouch on side, his youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide for his shrunk shank, and his big manly voice, turning again toward childish treble, pipes and whistles in his sound.”

Shakespeare’s description is accurate and detailed, but more importantly he understood that these stock figures of the Captain, the Doctor and Pantaloon, these Masks, are the great archetypes of the human psyche. Ben Jonson’s The Alchemist is densely populated with the same buffoons and they pop up in everything from Moliere through Charlie Chaplin and the Marx Brothers on to the San Francisco Mime Troupe.

The original commedia companies did not present written plays, but improvised from brief scenarios. They refreshed their memories during performance by glancing at a scenario pinned to the backstage wall. Within these loose structures, they were able to go on endlessly improvising comic scenes for the length of a show. Every time they returned to a scenario, they were free to add to, subtract from, or change it in whatever direction seemed to be working at the moment of performance. Acrobatics, juggling, legerdemain, song and dance were all part of their repertoire.

Over time, some of these scenarios became fixed into actual plays and among the most famous is Carlo Goldoni’s The Servant of Two Masters which was written for Gennaro Sacco around 1746. Known as Sacchi, he was considered the greatest Harlequin of his time and his particular variation on the standard Arlecchino was the Mask of Truffaldino, the servant of the title.

This play was written during Goldoni’s evolution from classic commedia toward a more naturalistic, Moliere-influenced comedy in which the written text triumphed over improvisation. In fact, Goldoni probably incorporated much of the comic improvisation and physical action of the performers into the play as published in 1753. We are able to see the old improvised commedia shining through Goldoni’s nascent reformed style.

The words of the play are almost inconsequential. The simple scenario is all that matters: two pairs of lovers are thwarted for three acts by Pantaloon, the Doctor, Brighella and Harlequin (Truffaldino in Goldoni’s text) who appear here as two fathers, an innkeeper and a servant, respectively.

Mozart loved this play and considered making it into an opera in 1783. Michael Redgrave played one of the lovers in a 1928 amateur production when he was still a student at Cambridge. Impresario Max Reinhardt, who produced and directed the 1935 film version of Midsummer Night’s Dream, directed it many times, but it was the great 20th century Italian director, Giorgio Strehler (1921-1997), founder of the Piccolo Teatro di Milan in 1947, who created the modern form of this play that same year as Arlecchino, Servant of Two Masters.

He closed the Piccolo Teatro’s first season with an astoundingly fresh revival of the Goldoni classic featuring Marcello Moretti in the title role. Moretti reintroduced improvised business into the play and what had seemed a death mask came to life again. After not having been played in Italy almost since the time of Goldoni, it became the longest running play in Italian theater history with Strehler eventually recasting the play a further 10 times.

Ferruccio Soleri, who joined Piccolo Teatro di Milano in 1958, became identified with the role of Arlecchino after a 1960 performance substituting for Moretti at the City Center in New York. He continued understudying Moretti until 1963 when, transcending merely copying Moretti, he became the definitive Arlecchino. Soleri might have been daunted by the loss of the commedia tradition over the previous two centuries. Instead, he reached down into his own comic soul to find again our common foolishness and humanity. He will be performing the role he has owned for the last 45 years this week in Berkeley with Piccolo Teatro di Milan as part of a world farewell tour that began in 1977 and hopefully will continue well into the future.

The Piccolo Teatro di Milano will perform Arlecchino, Servant of Two Masters with English supertitles at Zellerbach Playhouse at 8 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 26 through Saturday, Oct. 29 with matinees on Sat., Oct. 29 at 2 p.m. and on Sun., Oct. 30 at 3 p.m. During the run of this production there will also be lectures, conferences, pre-performance talks and an exhibition of commedia dell’arte costumes and masks in the Zellerbach Playhouse Lobby. For tickets and more information call 642-9988, or see www.calperfs.berkeley.edu.

Luigi Ciminachi/Piccolo Teatro di Milano

Company members in Piccolo Teatro di Milano’s production of Arlecchino, servitore di due padroni (Servant of Two Masters).›

“Breaking the Silence: Israeli Soldiers Speak Out Against the Occupation” Photography exhibit and presentation at 12:45 p.m. at Boalt Hall, UC Campus and at 7:30 p.m. at Berkeley Friends’ Church, 1600 Sacramento at Cedar. Presented by American Friends Service Committee and Jewish Voice for Peace. 415-565-0201, ext. 26.

FILM

Experimental Works from Bay Area Schools at 7:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808.

READINGS AND LECTURES

Berkeley Arts Festival A reading of Arnie Passman’s play, “Soul Control; Control of Soul” by James King and Allen Taylor at 8 p.m. at 2324 Shattuck Ave. Cost is $5. www.berkeleyartsfestival.com

Clifford Brown 75th Birthday Celebration Trumpet Summit with Arturo Sandoval, Benny Golson, Randy Brecker and many more at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square, through Sun. Cost is $18-$30. 238-9200.

James Low, Fadrmer, Firecracker at 9:30 p.m. at The Starry Plough. Cost is $7. 841-2082. www.starryploughpub.com

The Eddie Haskells, Trouble Maker, The Insurgents at 8 p.m. at 924 Gilman St. Cost is $5. 525-9926.

Midnite, reggae from St. Croix, at 9 p.m. at Shattuck Down Low, 2284 Shattuck Ave. Cost is $25-$27. 548-1159.

Guru Garage, jazz funk, at 8 p.m. at Jupiter. 848-8277.

Clifford Brown 75th Birthday Celebration Trumpet Summit with Arturo Sandoval, Benny Golson, Randy Brecker and many more at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square, through Sun. Cost is $18-$30. 238-9200.

SATURDAY, OCT. 29

CHILDREN

Los Amiguitos de La Peña with Betsy Rose, music for the fall season, at 10:30 a.m. at La Peña. Cost is $4 for adults, $3 for children. 849-2568.

I don’t usually do advocacy; sitting back and watching things go to hell is more my style. But with Halloween approaching, it seems like an auspicious time to make a pitch for the barn owls of Berkeley.

All owls are somewhat uncanny, and barn owls, with their ghostly heart-shaped faces and rasping cries, are more so than most. Having one fly into your headlights on a back road in south Texas can be an unsettling experience, one that both the owl and I survived.

Particularly in England, a lot of odd notions have accrued around the barn owl: familiar of witches, harbinger of death, forecaster of hailstorms. It shows up as a bird of ill omen in Shakespeare, Milton, Byron, and Keats. There is also the old belief, current in the Ozarks until fairly recently, that owl eggs are an infallible cure for alcoholism.

The real bird behind the myths is a pretty neat creature, and I’ve touched on some of its attributes in an earlier column. The placement of its ears and its neural architecture allow it to hunt in total darkness by triangulating on high-frequency sounds. For years, barn owls brought in to a wildlife rehab program in Fresno that were too badly injured to be released were sent to Stanford for acoustical research, ultimately leading to the development of the human cochlear implant.

Barn owls, unusually for birds of prey, don’t seem put off by the human presence. Cavity-nesters in the wild, they’ll use man-made structures or ornamental street trees. They seem to have a particular liking for palms, nesting up inside the fronds. According to Cathy Garner, who runs that Fresno program, the scarcity of barns and dead trees has prompted more and more barn owls, rural and urban, to switch to palms. Several of the Berkeley nest sites I’m aware of are in palm trees, usually of the Canary Island date variety.

Unfortunately for the owls, some Berkeley property owners have decided they don’t want them in the neighborhood. This year alone, two palms that historically hosted owl nests have been felled—one near Bancroft and Edwards, another on Curtis—and there may be more that I haven’t heard about. Some of the responsible parties have claimed liability concerns, but I suspect the real reason is the noise: young owls can make quite a racket when begging for food, and keep it up most of the night.

Why should anyone tolerate such a nuisance? I would submit that the barn owl’s services as a predator—a rodent control agent—far outweigh the short-term annoyance factor. Barn owls specialize in small rodents, of the field mouse size class; they’ll also take shrews (which are not strictly speaking rodents), young rabbits, and the occasional bird or reptile. Unlike great horned owls, they would be unlikely to go after a house cat. Proportions of prey species vary from habitat to habitat, but a Louisiana study reported that house mice made up 15 per cent of the diet of the local owls, with non-native rats accounting for another 5 percent.

You can tell what a barn owl has been eating by teasing apart the pellets it coughs up and going through the skeletal remains. It’s harder to quantify the bird’s appetite. I’ve read that a Lord Lilford—not a Harry Potter character but a real British peer—had a tame barn owl that would take mice from his hand. He once fed the bird nine mice at one sitting, then, after a three-hour breather, four more. That may still stand as the individual mouse-eating record.

Consumption peaks when a barn owl pair is raising its family. An owlet can eat its weight in mice in one night—and before it fledges, its weight will have overshot the typical one-pound bulk of an adult. The only calculation I’ve been able to find of how this would translate into rodents was done by Bruce Colvin, based on his field work in Ohio and New Jersey: a brood of six (not unusual for these prolific birds) can consume 600 field mice in the 10 weeks it takes them to become independent and begin hunting on their own.

Without knowing the barn owl population of Berkeley, it’s hard to extrapolate further. But I have a feeling there are more than enough mice and rats to go around. Brown and black rats thrive in beds of ivy. A couple of years ago, an ivy-removal project I was involved with on the west side of town prompted complaints from neighbors about a rat invasion. They didn’t invade; they had just been rendered visible. And as for mice—the mice that once ate all the labels off my wine bottles, the mice that twice have bedded down inside my stove—well, don’t get me started. If you bake a lot, you don’t want stove mice. You think moose turd pie is unappetizing? Try mouse pee pie. And my associate Matt the Cat is an abject failure as a mouser. He’ll go as far as pointing them, but he leaves the dirty work up to me.

So we do need those owls. And I’m happy to report that Lisa Owens Viani, Berkeley writer/editor/naturalist, is launching a pro-owl organization called Keep Barn Owls in Berkeley. Her goal is to educate palm-tree owners about the benefits of having owls as neighbors. (Nest boxes are actually safer than palm trees, which the nestlings have a tendency to fall out of; we’d like to see more of the boxes that went up at Cesar Chavez Park some time back). If you’re interested in helping, e-mail Lisa: lowensvi@earthlink.net. Or contact me via the Daily Planet. ›

Return of the Over-the-Hills Gang Hikers 55 years and older who are interested in nature study, history, fitness, and fun are invited to join us on a series of monthly excursions exploring our Regional Parks. Meets at 10 a.m. at Tilden Nature Area. For information and to register call 525-2233.

Celebrate Halloween with Bats with Maggie Hooper of the Bat Conservation Fund at 6:30 p.m. at the Kensington Library, 61 Arlington Ave. 524-3043.

“Einstein the Peacenik” with Dr. Lawrence Badash, Professor Emeritus, History of Science, UC Santa Barbara, at 7 p.m. at the Florence Schwimley Little Theater, Berkeley High School. Free, all welcome.

Berkeley High School Site Council meets at 4:30 p.m. in Conference Room B in the Admin. Building. On the agenda are Intervention updates (including 10th grade counseling), a discussion of the IB process and timeline and subcommittee sign ups. 525-0124.

Berkeley PC Users Group Problem solving and beginners meeting to answer, in simple English, users questions about Windows computers. At 7 p.m. at 1145 Walnut St. corner of Eunice. All welcome, no charge. 527-2177.

Berkeley Camera Club meets at 7:30 p.m., at the Northbrae Community Church, 941 The Alameda. Share your digital images, slides and prints and learn what other photographers are doing. Monthly field trips. 548-3991. www.berkeleycameraclub.org

St. John’s Prime Timers meets at 9:30 a.m. at St. John’s Presbyterian Church, 2727 College Ave. We offer ongoing classes in exercise and creative arts, and always welcome new members over 50. 845-6830.

WEDNESDAY, OCT. 26

Flu Shots for Berkeley Residents age 60 or over or “high-risk” from 12:30 to 2:30 p.m. at the South Berkeley Senior Center. 981-5300.

Albany Measure A Special Election and Education Funding with Assemblymember Loni Hancock and Alameda County Superintendant of Schools Sheila Jordan at 4 p.m. at Albany High School, outdoor amphitheater in courtyard, corner of Key Route and Thousand Oaks. 282-8577.

“Healing the Trauma of Enslavement” Maafa Awareness Month panel discussion at 7 p.m. at Malonga Casquelourd Center for the Arts, 1428 Alice St. Free and open to the public. 261-8436, ext. 2.

Easy Does It Disability Assitance Board meeting at 6:30 p.m. at North Berkeley Senior Center. All welcome. 845-5513. www.easyland.org

“Choosing and Preparing for a New Dog or Cat” at 7:30 p.m. at dogTec, 5221 Central Ave. #1. 644-0729. www.openpaw.org

The Truth About Bats with bat conservationist Maggie Hooper at 7 p.m. at RabbitEars, 303 Arlington Ave., Kensington. Free. For school age children. 525-6155.

Lunar Lounge Express, A party under the stars to view the Red planet at 8 p.m. at the Chabot Space and Science Center, 10000 Skyline Blvd., Oakland. Tickets are $15-20. 336-7300. www.chabotspace.org

Day of the Dead Celebration on Solano Ave. Gather at 6:30 p.m. at Solano and Alameda. Bring a photo of those you wish to remember, a candle, flowers or food to feed their souls. 527-5358. www.solanoave.org

Three Beats for Nothing sings early music for fun and practice at 10 a.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 655-8863.

Cinéma and Dinner at The Alliance Française of Berkeley at 7 p.m. at 2004 Woolsey St. Free, but everybody brings something. 548-7481 or afberkeley@sbcglobal.net

Berkeley Chess Club meets Fridays at 8 p.m. at the East Bay Chess Club, 1940 Virginia St. Players at all levels are welcome. 845-1041.

“The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” Haunted House performance tour at 8 p.m. and Sun. at 6 p.m. at Oakland School for the Arts, 1800 San Pablo Ave. Cost is $5-$7, children under 7 free. 873-8800.

Halloween Bazaar with face painting, children's games, apple bobbing, pumpkins, rummage sale, book sale, food, crafts, and a haunted house from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at The New School of Berkeley, 1606 Bonita St. at Cedar. 548-9165.

“Gaza Disengagement and the Importance of Equal Rights for Palestinians” with Ilan Pappe, historian and senior lecturer in political science at Haifa University. at 7:30 p.m. at First Congregational Church, 2501 Harrison St., Oakland. Cost is $20.

Village Gathering for African Americans with Disabilities A day of information, resources and suppot at the Cesar Chavez Educational Center, 2825 International Blvd., Oakland. Conference from 8:30 a.m. to 12:45 p.m. followed by vendor fair to 4 p.m. 547-7322, ext. 15.

Walking Tour of Old Oakland around Preservation Park to see Victorian architecture. Meet at 10 a.m. in front of Preservation Park at 13th St. and MLK, Jr. Way. Tour lasts 90 minutes. For reservations call 238-3234.

Spirit Walking Aqua Chi (TM) A gentle water exercise class at 10 a.m. at the Berkeley High Warm Pool. Cost is $3.50 per session. 526-0312.

SUNDAY, OCT. 30

Remember to Set Your Clocks Back at 2 a.m.

Pumpkin Carving Bring your own pumpkin and we will get cretive in carving them. From 2 to 4 p.m. at the Tilden Nature Center, Tilden Park. 525-2233.

Autumn Family Day at the Richmond Art Center Pumpkin-carving, mask-making, apple-bobbing and performan-

You come upon them almost as a pleasant surprise from out of the past, like an explorer finding a shining obelisk poking out of a sea of Egyptian sand.

The eight San Francisco Bay Historical Markers stand along the Richmond shoreline—the east bay’s most accessible waterfront—where you can find some of the most spectacular views in the area.

Along the curving shoreline to the north are sweeping views first of Emeryville’s shimmering towers, then of Oakland’s downtown skyline, and then the slow rise of the foothills leading up to the horizon. To the right are the working Richmond docks where containers the size of boxcars—they actually are boxcars—are dropped by cranes like Star Wars creatures into the holds of carrier ships the size of enormous buildings. Straight ahead are the bay waters themselves, cool and gray, spanned by great bridges, the hunting island once owned by Bing Crosby, and far across, the golden domes and spires of the city of San Francisco.

Sixty-five years ago, a small city population of workers—90,000 at its height—looked out upon this same magnificent Richmond shoreline view as they built the ships that helped win World War II for America and the allies.

Part of the untold story of how that happened—and how Richmond went overnight from a Southern-like, mostly-white backwater town of 23,000 to a multicolor, multicultural city of 100,000—is now told in Richmond’s Bay Trail Markers.

They are unlike the old roadside historical markers which simply remark, a little dryly and dolefully, that “200 Yards From Here, In 1864, A Command Of Confederates Was Ambushed By Union Soldiers,” and nothing more.

Instead, Richmond’s Bay Trail Markers are living testimonials set on 18-foot-tall metal stanchions (“suggesting,” the marker brochure explains, “the prow of a massive wartime ship”). Permanently embossed on graffiti-proof surfaces, the markers themselves contain old photos and quotations from the people who worked in the wartime shipyards, many of whom are alive today and continue to play a role in Richmond’s political, social, and economic life.

One marker shows the clubs and theaters and cowboy bars that sprung up to entertain the massive numbers of off-duty workers; another depicts the stories of the Italian-American and Japanese-American Richmond citizens suddenly finding themselves ostracized, interned, and enemies in their home towns (“When my family returned to the nursery, all the glass panes in the greenhouses were broken. I didn’t see it because I was overseas with the 442nd in Italy.” reads the poignant quote); another shows Richmond’s segregated union halls.

Dedicated last fall, the markers are designed so that each can be viewed alone and separately by people walking along the waterfront or as an entire story outlining Richmond in the war years.

The marker design was a collaboration of the design firm Mayer/Reed, visual artists James Harrison and Lewis Watts, and writer Chiori Santiago, but they were the brainchild of Berkeley historian Donna Graves.

“Credit for the markers needs to go to Donna,” says Betty Reid Soskin, a Richmond resident who works for the Rosie The Riveter Park project of the National Park Service and who worked in the segregated union hall during World War II and whose quotation appears on one of the markers.

“She was determined that they reflected the reality of those times, and that they included authentic voices,” she said. “She insisted on that.”

Soskin was also one of several local persons who sat on the marker’s advisory panel while what Graves calls “some difficult topics of race and segregation and patriotism” were being hammered out.

Graves, who will only admit that she “kind of put the project together,” said the idea for the markers came while she was working on the Rosie the Riveter Memorial, which honored the women who worked the wartime shipyards while men did the fighting overseas.

“We came across so many rich stories about wartime Richmond during that time,” Graves says. “I was interested. I thought others would be. It adds a layer of history and memory to an area of the city whose past has pretty much been wiped away. It’s not intended to be just a Richmond story told to other people in Richmond. It’s telling the Richmond story to the world.”

She was hired to develop the project by the Richmond Redevelopment Agency, which has jurisdiction over construction on Richmond’s waterfront. A third of the project money came from the Redevelopment Agency, with the rest coming from the California Coastal Conservancy and the Association of Bay Area Governments.

“We wanted the markers to be living memorials, rather than simply the sort of plaques on a stick you usually see,” she explained. “Everywhere during the second World War, Americans were being bombarded with the rhetoric that everyone was welcome on the home front. But the reality of minorities on the Richmond shipyards was a difficult period of tension where discrimination continued. While all that was going on, these were everyday people doing extraordinary things in extraordinary times.”

A Planning Commission majority, against the outspoken wishes of Chair Harry Pollack, Wednesday night elected the panel’s three representatives to the panel that will create a new plan for an enlarged downtown district.

The Downtown Area Plan Advisory Committee (DAPAC) was formed in response to the settlement agreement reached after the city sued UC Berkeley, challenging the school’s Long Range Development Plan (LRDP) outlining expansion plans through 2020.

By a five-four vote, commissioners Gene Poschman, Helen Burke and Susan Wengraf were elected to the 21-member committee over the strenuous objections of Chair Harry Pollack.

Wengraf joined with Pollack, David Stoloff and James Samuels to oppose the motion by Commissioner Rob Wrenn, but they were outvoted by Wrenn, Poschman, Burke, Sara Shumer and Mike Sheen.

Discussion of appointments was the last item of business, and Pollack opened by saying he planned to make the appointments at the commission’s next meeting, to which Burke replied, “What will change?”

“I’m asking for one more week,” replied Pollack. “More than three of you have asked to be on it.”

“Very few people have been appointed,” Wengraf said. “Linda Maio appointed two who are totally unknown to me (Winston Burton and Victoria Eisen). Betty Olds has appointed two (Jenny Wenk and Dorothy Walker), and Laurie Capitelli appointed one (Mim Hawley),” she said, referring to the two appointments each city councilmember is allowed to make. “I have no clue at all about what the community wants. We don’t have to do it tonight.”

“We have three appointments, three out of nine” planning commissioners. “If anyone is juggling the balance, it should be the council,” added Shumer.

“I prefer to do it tonight,” said Wrenn, adding that “it should be the three members with the most experience in downtown planning issues—Susan, Gene and myself, but I don’t want it myself.”

“The chair has the authority to make appointments,” said Stoloff.

“I’m only asking that we wait a week,” said Pollack.

“Aren’t you going to be appointed by a councilperson?” Wengraf asked Wrenn.

“There are rumors to that effect,” Wrenn answered. “And if there are five planning commissioners appointed, one will have to go. I don’t want to be [one of the three] because I’m hoping to be on the Planning Commission not that much longer. I’m in favor of Gene, Susan and Helen,” he said, moving their appointment.

The second came from Shumer.

“I have a different opinion,” Pollack declared. “It’s unfortunate you don’t have the courtesy to wait. James Samuels certainly brings a lot of experience. He’s an architect and he served on the landmarks commission for a long time. He has at least as much experience as David and me,” he said, adding, “Your criteria are suspect.”

“It’s the tradition of the commission to respect the wishes of the chair,” said Wengraf. “I can’t remember a time when we didn’t. We can wait a week and we may have more information.”

Stoloff objected too, but when the vote was called, Wrenn and his allies carried the day.

“This is an unfortunate precedent,” declared Pollack.

“Does that mean I’m on?” asked Wengraf.

“If you want to resign, we’ll have to pick someone else at our next meeting,” said Poschman.

Then Wengraf suggested that Burke might not want to serve because she’s already chairing the city’s Creeks Task Force and serving on two other committees—but Burke said nothing.

Wengraf then tried another gambit, suggesting that, with Kriss Worthington calling for more diversity on city commissions, Sheen, an Asian, might be a more appropriate appointment—but Sheen said nothing.

The two alternatives suggested by Pollack and Wengraf were also the commission’s newest members.

With the addition of the three commissioners, the 8 of the DAPAC’s 21 slots have been filled. All the remaining appointments will be the choices, two each, of city councilmembers, with one remaining for Capitelli. Councilmembers have to make their appointment by Halloween, the deadline they imposed.

As the title acknowledges, DAPAC serves only in an advisory capacity, and it is the planning commission itself which is responsible for producing the document itself.

The committee is charged with completing its work by November 2007, and the resulting plan, after more work by city and university planners must be presented to the City Council by May 25, 2009.

Home teaching permits

At the direction of the City Council, commissioners tackled the issue of people who teach and tutor pupils in the own home.

Under existing codes, music teachers, math tutors and others who offer instruction at their own residences are required to pay $2,200 for their fees, and when told of the number, they walk away, said Planning Manager Mark Rhoades. The figure was set in 1999 with the strong backing of then-Mayor Shirley Dean.

In January, the commission had recommended that home teaching be placed under an administrative use permit (AUP), which requires city staff time and notice to neighbors, to which they can raise objections and concerns about issues such as noise and parking.

AUPs in residential neighborhoods, however, cost $1,362.70—a number councilmembers said was too high when they sent the issue back to the Planning Commission.

Assistant Planner Fatema Crane presented the commission with a proposal that would recoup 75 percent of staff time costs, which would have brought the cost of the permit, with various other fees, to $826.50.

Rhoades acknowledged that even the lesser figure wouldn’t result in any lines at the Planning Department’s Milvia Street office, adding, “The council wants to legitimize them. The bar to entry is far too high process-wise and fee-wise.

Poschman said he wanted to keep the applications under the AUP process so that neighbors were notified, and Burke moved to keep the AUP but lower the fee for home teaching to $100.

Wengraf offered a substitute motion that kept the $100 fee but lowered the permit to a zoning certificate, which doesn’t require notification. Stoloff seconded the motion, only to see it defeated.

AUPs, unlike zoning certificates, can be appealed to the Zoning Adjustments Board.

Burke’s motion carried the day, with Pollack, Wengraf and Samuels in opposition.

In other business, commissioners got their first look at proposed fees for appeals of decisions by the Planning and Landmarks Preservation commissions and for the Zoning Adjustments Board. The issue will come up for formal consideration at a later meeting.

Commissioners also got a first look at proposed transportation services fees to be paid by developers of new projects in the city and designed to fund alternative transit and other transportation modes that will reduce their motor vehicle traffic.

The decision on the fees will be left up to the city Transportation Commission.

The Berkeley City Council Tuesday began tackling a dirty problem that could cost property owners up to $4,500.

Under a 1987 cease-and-desist order from the San Francisco Bay Regional Water Quality Control Board for local cities to repair city-owned sanitary sewer lines to reduce ground water contamination, Berkeley has been working to repair the aging system that carries sink and toilet water to an East Bay Municipal Utility District treatment facility.

To comply with the water board’s 30-year cease and desist order, Berkeley has replaced about half of its main sanitary sewer lines.

But the city has determined that about half of the leakage from its sanitary sewers comes not from the city-owned sewer mains but from creaky clay pipes, known as sewer laterals, that connect private buildings to the main sewer line.

And now the council must decide how to make property owners pay for repairs.

The sewer laterals, which are the responsibility of property owners, pose a couple of problems. Most are damaged, either from intruding tree roots or wear and tear, and leak contaminated water which can flow into creeks and the bay. Also many properties have illegal sewer hook-ups that send rain water run-off into the private sewer laterals and through the sanitary sewer system.

The extra water, especially during the rainy season, sometimes overwhelms the sanitary sewer system, resulting in blockages that back-fill sewer water, potentially contaminated with hepatitis and e-coli bacteria, into bathtubs and city streets.

“This really isn’t all that optional,” Public Works Commission Chair Sara Shumer told the council. “We’re talking about health and safety issues.”

Repairing a sewer lateral will cost property owners between $3,500 and $4,500, and few property owners will be exempt from the costs, said Acting Public Works Director Claudette Ford. Out of 31,300 buildings with sewer laterals, Ford estimated 75 percent would need repairs.

The council expressed unanimous support for requiring property owners to repair sewer laterals as a condition of selling their homes or doing remodeling work estimated to cost more than $100,000, or $50,000 if the work includes two or more sewer hookups. However, the council was not ready to endorse recommendations from the Public Works Commission that property owners be made to fix sewer laterals when the city is replacing the sewer main running down the street, and that in three years the city would begin mandatory inspections of laterals on streets where the city has already replaced the sewer main.

Although repairing laterals at the same time the city replaces its sewer line would lower costs for property owners, councilmembers feared some wouldn’t be able to afford the work.

“I can see some homeowners where an outlay of $3,000 to $5,000 would be prohibitively expensive,” said Councilmember Laurie Capitelli. The council asked for city staff to return with options to help low-income property owners pay for repairs. One possibility would be for the city to pay for repairs and recoup the money when the property is sold.

Several cities subsidize lateral repairs, but Berkeley’s sewer fund ordinance prohibits the fund from paying to do repair work on private property, said Deputy City Attorney Zach Cowan. The city can subsidize repairs from its general fund, he added.

Susan Schwartz, an advocate for keeping Berkeley’s many creeks contamination-free, praised the council for beginning to address the sewer issue. But Berkeley Property Owners Association President Michael Wilson, contacted after the council meeting, said the council needed to find a way to make sure homeowners don’t have to foot the bill.

“The city can’t just continue to issue edicts without any regard to real world financial concerns,” he said.

The water board recently required cities to manage the private sections of sanitary sewer systems and has been hinting that it might impose fines for cities that fail to reduce contamination, said Jeffrey Egeberg, engineering manager for the Public Works Department.

“They are strongly encouraging that we do this,” he added.

In Alameda County, the leaders at regulating private sewer laterals are Albany, which requires inspection upon sale of property or remodeling that exceeds five percent of the assessed property value, and Alameda, which requires inspection upon sale for buildings over 25-years-old.

Regulating sewer laterals to the extent recommended by the Public Works Commission would cost the city $437,900 a year. The program would be paid for by fees charged to property owners, including a $185 certificate of compliance fee.

In cases where the city orders property owners to inspect their laterals, if the lateral does not need repairs, the city would pick up the $185 fee.

Inspections, which cost between $75 and $350, involve inserting a camera through the private lateral.

In cases where the lateral was damaged by tree roots from a city-owned tree planted on the lawn extension beside the sidewalk, the city would be responsible for repairing the lateral.

In most cases, fixing a lateral wouldn’t require a property owner to dig up a front yard. Egeberg said new technology allows construction workers to insert a new lateral, made of plastic, through two holes, one near the street and the other near the building.

Faced with growing neighborhood complaints, West Berkeley’s Pacific Steel Casting Company announced Tuesday that it plans to install a carbon filter designed to eliminate the burning rubber smell wafting from its factory.

The filter, which Pacific Steel hopes to have installed by September 2006, will cost several million dollars, said former state Assemblymember Dion Aroner, a partner with AJE Partners, who is a spokesperson for the company.

“Pacific Steel is saying they believe they know what the problem is, and they’re going forward with a solution,” she said.

Pacific Steel installed carbon filters on its other two plants in 1985 and 1991 in response to neighborhood complaints about the smell. At the time, the company said a filter wasn’t needed for the third plant because it was rarely in operation.

However as demand for steel castings has risen over the past two years, Pacific Steel has increased production in the third plant, Aroner said.

“I’m glad to hear they’re finally doing it,” said Janis Shroeder, a West Berkeley resident and member of the West Berkeley Alliance for Clean Air and Safe Jobs. But Shroeder and alliance member Andrew Galpern still fear that plant at 1333 Second St. is emitting harmful chemicals throughout West Berkeley and Albany.

“Their goal is to eliminate the odor, but they’re not addressing the fact that they are pumping other stuff into the air which won’t be captured by the filter,” Galpern said.

Pacific Steel is scheduled to undergo a health risk assessment, overseen by the Bay Area Air Quality Management District beginning later this year. The testing is expected to be completed by March, Aroner said, and will cost Pacific Steel about $500,000.

Prior studies by the Air District showed that emissions of cancer-causing particles were barely within state standards.

Also, in an agreement with Berkeley officials, Pacific Steel will still proceed with odor tests of all three plants determine the exact source of the burning rubber smell. The study will be prepared by environmental consultant Environmental Resources Management (ERM) and supervised jointly by the city, Pacific Steel and a monitor assigned by the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

Since March, the Air District has cited Pacific Steel with three notices of violation for releasing noxious odors.

Shroeder, who along with other West Berkeley residents sued Pacific Steel in 1984 over the issue, said the odor has dissipated in her neighborhood but worsened in others after the company inserted carbon filters on the two plants.

The filter is designed to absorb carbons released from the plant during the production of steel castings. Pacific Steel says the burning rubber smell is a by-product of heating sand molds and pouring in liquid steel, which then cools to form a steel mold.

In an unsuccessful attempt to reduce the odor, Pacific Steel tried different binders in the sand molds, but the quality of the mold was poor, according to Aroner.

The proposed filtration system would essentially rebuild the interior of the third plant, Aroner said. Before the company can move forward with installing the system, it must receive approval from the air district and Berkeley.

The city’s toxics manager, Nabil Al-Hadithy, said Pacific Steel’s plan appeared solid. “It looks like they’re cutting to the chase,” he said.

Councilmember Linda Maio, who represents the adjoining neighborhoods praised the proposal. “It sounds like a major commitment of bucks,” she said. “We hope what they’re doing will get the job done.”

For progressive activists, living in the East Bay has the defect of its virtues. It’s gratifying to reside among politically like-minded others but frustrating to find oneself mostly preaching to the choir about matters of state, national and global concern. (Local affairs are not nearly so consensual, as readers of the Daily Planet are acutely aware.) For that reason, many locals went far afield during last year’s presidential campaign. Since last fall, the missionary impulse has faded in most left-liberal quarters. But at the Wellstone Democratic Renewal Club (WDRC), tapping new constituencies has remained a high priority, leading to some novel political initiatives.

Founded in the spring of 2005, WDRC now has nearly 300 members, making it one of the largest Democratic Party clubs in the Bay Area. From the start, the group’s mission has included building a progressive network in the Democratic Party from the ground up. Achieving that goal has led Wellstoners to reach well beyond their geographical base, which centers in Berkeley and Oakland.

For the last month or so, the club’s Peace Committee has been soliciting donations for an extensive newspaper ad campaign in support of House Joint Resolution 55, a bipartisan Congressional joint resolution requiring the president to begin the total withdrawal of all military forces from Iraq no later than October 2006.

The Wellstoners intend to place full-page ads next month in the Oakland Tribune, the Tri-Valley Herald, the Hayward Daily Review, and the Berkeley Daily Planet.

The ads will thank local Congressional co-sponsors—Representatives Miller, Lee and Stark—and urge readers to encourage elected officials and bodies to support the resolution. The names of donors who helped pay for the ads, which cost between $1,300 (Daily Planet) and $3,800 (Oakland Tribune) apiece—will also appear. Beyond publicizing HJR 55, the campaign is intended to be a pilot project for similar grass-roots efforts in communities around the state and the country.

Last spring, WDRC undertook an even more ambitious outreach project. Club members went into the 11th Congressional District (CD 11) seeking allies in their struggle against Republican efforts to privatize Social Security. They chose the 11th District partly because of proximity. CD 11 is a torturously gerrymandered area that includes portions of four counties—Alameda, Contra Costa, San Joaquin and Santa Clara—and cities as diverse as Danville, Manteca and Stockton.

The 11th District had an additional appeal for the Wellstoners: It’s represented in Congress by Richard Pombo, the seven-term, right-wing Republican from Tracy who chairs the House Resources Committee. WDRC member Jody Ginsberg, a resident of San Leandro, describes Congressman Pombo as a longtime “stealth candidate” who recently gained visibility and notoriety through his proposal to gut the Endangered Species Act. (That proposal passed the House on Sept. 29.)

Pombo is circulating a draft of a bill to sell 15 national parks and naming rights to visitors’ centers and trails. He’s also been a staunch supporter of President Bush’s campaign to privatize Social Security.

The Wellstone Democratic Renewal Club had endorsed and campaigned for Pombo’s opponent in last fall’s election, Jerry McNerny. McNerny had never run for office and was operating with a shoestring budget. Nevertheless, he got 40 percent of the vote.

When Pombo jumped aboard Bush’s campaign to privatize Social Security last winter, the Wellstoners decided that working in the 11th Congressional District offered a political two-fer: they could mobilize around saving Social Security and in so doing, undermine Pombo’s base. About 90,000 people in Pombo’s District draw Social Security. It seemed like fertile territory for progressive action.

Starting last April, a team of six to eight WDRC members made weekend trips to Lodi, Stockton, Manteca, Oakdale, Pleasanton and Danville. They brought along the brochure that had been prepared by the club’s Social Security Committee and an anti-Pombo petition. In each place, the Wellstoners would hook up with local activists.

“We started going to farmers markets and sitting next to local Democratic club tables,” says WDRC member Matthew Hallinan.

The Wellstoners also worked with the Tri-Valley Progressive Action Network, the Gray Panthers and the California Alliance of Retired Americans (CARA). They discovered that every town and city in the Central Valley has a CARA club. In Stockton and Fresno, Hallinan says, CARA is “actually a force.”

The immediate response to their efforts was heartening. The WDRC piece on Social Security, Hallinan says, was “the only brochure I’ve passed out in a long time that wasn’t immediately thrown away.”

“We created a buzz every time we showed up,” Ginsberg says. “People would rush up. I’ve never had such an easy job tabling.”

In her view, that’s because Social Security is basically an economic issue, and with a few exceptions, like Danville, the 11th Congressional District is not an affluent area.

“Even if people are Republicans, they want Social Security,” she said.

Some younger people did not rush up—at least not at first.

Ginsberg says that she “saw mothers and kids disagreeing—and I’m talking about grown kids thirty years old. A mother would drag her son over to the table, saying, ‘You have to learn.’ By the end, I saw a lot more young adults who were knowledgeable on the issue. Rock the Vote has information on their website about why Social Security is important to young people. We drew on their information for our flyer.”

On May 10, the Wellstoners joined a protest in front of Congressman Pombo’s Stockton office on the 70th anniversary of Social Security. They had balloons, a cake, and a big, gift-wrapped box with a card that said, “Happy 70th Birthday, Social Security.” They were not greeted by the congressman.

In July WDRC members carried a pro-Social Security banner in a Fourth of July parade in Danville. They marched with McNerny supporters, members of the local Democratic Club and a peace group.

“I’ve never seen such a polarized community,” Hallinan says. “We were booed and cheered.” But it was also in Danville, he said, that the club had “the best luck” with its organizing efforts.

By the end of the summer, the Wellstoners decided to pull back from the 11th District.

“All of us work,” Hallinan explains. “Driving two or three hours every weekend was too much.”

And while people flocked to the club’s petition and supplied assistance, local residents proved reluctant to take the initiative.

“We became convinced that [Social Security] is a great issue, but we couldn’t get a volunteer base,” Hallinan says.

Hallinan and Ginsberg both say that WDRC will return to CD 11. Jerry McNerny has built a grass-roots network there and wants to run against Pombo in 2006.

There’s talk of a fight in the Democratic primary; Congresswoman Tauscher may back another candidate. In any case, the Wellstoners plan to register voters, to make endorsements and to work for the candidates and issues they support.

Hallinan says, “We just got our toes in the water.”

Photo: Contributed photo

Members of the Wellstone Renewal Club demonstrate in front of Rep. Richard Pombo’s Tracy office. The seven-term Republican Congressmember chairs the House Resources Committee.›

On a six-to-three vote, city councilmembers Tuesday approved proposed amendments to Berkeley’s condominium conversion ordinance, preparing the ground for a final vote next Tuesday.

The measure is an interim step, needed to allow the 40 or so conversions now in the pipeline to proceed while the city works out a more definitive piece of legislation, first in a workshop with city councilmembers and officials on Jan. 17.

“This ensures the grandfathering in of previously existing tenancies-in-common so that those that were in the pipeline that were already existing in 1992 can continue” to go through the conversion process along with the rental units where owners have proposed to convert, said Housing Director Steve Barton.

The city conversion ordinance allows for conversions of 100 units a year, a quota that hasn’t been met so far this year, he said.

“All who have already applied would be ready to go forward,” he said.

The major areas of conflict Tuesday involved conversion fees and which, if any, tenants an owner would be allowed to evict once embarked on conversion.

The proposed ordinance offered two alternatives for duplex owners who had lived on the property or in another Berkeley rental for at least seven years. Under the first, the city would charge no fees for conversion while the second would keep the fee at the current rate of five percent of the sales price.

For larger rental properties in the pipeline, the interim ordinance caps conversion fees on larger units at 12.5 percent when owners agree to put existing occupants under rent control to protect their rights.

The purpose of the fees is to mitigate the loss of affordable housing by providing cash for the city’s Housing Trust Fund to provide for new affordable units.

“The legal basis for the fee is the change in value from rental to ownership,” said City Attorney Manuela Albuquerque. “The legal rationale is that you are losing affordability.”

The ordinance allows conversions without bringing the buildings up to city code standards, while the existing ordinance requires code compliance before conversion, Barton said.

The second set of alternatives dealt with tenant protections. Under the first variant, only low- and moderate-income tenants as well as the elderly would be protected from eviction, while the second version protected all tenants regardless of age or income.

The city Housing Advisory Commission voted Monday evening to support the amendments that would protect the rights of existing tenants to remain in the buildings after conversion and would cap fees to 5 percent for owner-occupied two-, three- and four-unit properties, which would also not be counted under the 100-unit quota system.

Councilmember Kriss Worthington moved adoption of the ordinance with the total tenant protection provision and the 5 percent fee for owner-occupied duplex conversions.

Councilmember Laurie Capitelli offered a third protection variant that would have protected the low- and moderate-income tenants, the elderly and those with disabilities, while allowing eviction of higher-income renters.

Capitelli’s motion went down to defeat with only Gordon Wozniak and Betty Olds joining him. Linda Maio, Darryl Moore, Max Anderson, Dona Spring and Mayor Tom Bates then joined with Worthington to pass his original motion.

“There’s a lot more work to do,” said Bates. “I’m going to support this, but I’m not happy with it. I’m really eager for January so we can sink our teeth in it.”

Soft story changes

The second major piece of legislation before the council also carried the day, this time by a unanimous vote.

At issue was an amendment to the Berkeley Municipal Code to adopt an inventory of so-called soft story buildings and to adopt a section of the 2003 International Existing Building Code and Amendments.

Soft story buildings are structures with ground floors that are especially vulnerable to collapse in a major earthquake, and the new building code amendment sets forth requirements for stabilizing the structures.

The measures place the nearly 400 buildings with 5,000 residential units on a city Inventory of Potentially Hazardous Buildings and requires owners to notify residents and the public of the potential dangers and gives owners 180 days in which they can appeal their listing.

Owners of listed properties will then have two years to submit an engineering report analyzing whether the building is capable of handling a major temblor.

The changes adopted Monday don’t require owners to make the changes, an issue to be taken up later by the council.

Other business

The council also:

• Denied an appeal of a Zoning Adjustments Board (ZAB) decision to approve the construction of a second story to a home at 1322 Kains Ave. Neighbor Laura Riggs contested the approval because the added story will cast her house into partial shadow.

• Denied an appeal challenging ZAB’s approval of the partial demolition of a single-story Victorian cottage and its conversion into a three-story, three-unit condominium at 2901 Otis St. and overturned a Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) decision to declare the building a structure of merit, then remanded the project back to ZAB and the LPC.

• Affirmed a ZAB decision to allow the opening of a new gelato restaurant at 2170 Shattuck Ave.

• Partially overturned a ZAB decision approving construction of a new home at 2615 Marin Ave., approving an appeal by neighbors to lower the roofline by a foot to restore part of their views of the Bay and remanded the project back to ZAB.

• Approved a 31-month contract with Universal Building Services, a union shop, to provide janitorial at the city Public Safety Building through fiscal year 2008. Councilmembers Kriss Worthington and Max Anderson voted against the contract.

• Delayed until next Tuesday a vote on a resolution calling on the council to reaffirm its support for the full demolition and removal of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory’s Bevatron and Building 51.

• Approved on first reading the sale of the last major piece of surplus city property, a building at 2344 Sixth St., to LifeLong Medical Care, Inc., for $2.2 million.

• Adopted a revised Housing Element of the General Plan after making revisions required after the state Department of Housing and Community Development rejected earlier drafts. Only Dona Spring voted against adoption.

• Adopted unanimously the city plan and zoning amendments and the environmental documents required before the Gilman Street Playing Fields can be built on the southern parking area of Golden Gate Fields on land owned by the East Bay Regional Parks District, a project hailed by Worthington as “the second biggest accomplishment of the Bates administration.”f

Berkeley veterans are promising to press forward with the city’s annual Veteran’s Day commemoration without the support of one of Berkeley’s most famous veterans.

On Monday Country Joe McDonald, chairperson of the Veterans Day Commemoration Committee and writer of numerous anti-war songs, abruptly canceled the event scheduled for Nov. 11 after committee members rejected his choice for a keynote speaker, Bill Mitchell.

Mitchell, a veteran and the father of a soldier killed last year while serving in Iraq, is a co-founder along with Cindy Sheehan of Gold Star Parents for Peace.

While veterans on the committee say they have nothing against Mitchell or his politics, they want the commemoration to be politically neutral.

“This is a time to honor our comrades who served this country,” said Ed Harper, adjutant of Disabled American Veterans Chapter 25. “It’s a memorial. It shouldn’t be about the war.”

Harper, who said he would demonstrate against the Iraq War any day but Veterans Day, maintained his view was seconded by the long-standing committee members other than McDonald, including DAV member Nathaniel Harrison, residents Tim and Linda Perry and Martin Snapp, a Berkeley-based reporter for the Knight Ridder corporate newspapers whose report on the controversy appeared in the Contra Costa Times, the San Jose Mercury News and the East Bay Daily News. Harper charged that when McDonald rejoined the committee as chair earlier this year he brought in several anti-war members seeking to politicize the event.

McDonald was backed on the committee by Hal Carlstad, who joined the committee earlier this year.

McDonald countered that the committee’s position amounted to censorship, which shouldn’t be tolerated at a city-sponsored event.

“It’s a slippery slope to ask a Gold Star father and military veteran to censor his remarks,” McDonald said. “The event should be a day for veterans to say what they feel.”

Berkeley Mayor Tom Bates is planning to meet with McDonald and the Veterans Day committee next week to salvage the event, said his Senior Aide Julie Sinai.

Committee members said the event will go on with or without McDonald.

“I don’t know how he could cancel it,” said Tim Perry. “It wasn’t his event to cancel. Now he’s thrown everything into confusion.”

Harper said McDonald had e-mailed event participants, including the Cal Band, that the event was canceled.

McDonald said a Veterans Day commemoration would be impossible without the support of the entire committee.

“Otherwise it’s just a private party,” he said. “It’s not the event we’ve been doing.”

Berkeley has held Veterans Day Commemoration’s at Civic Center Park since 2002. The half-hour event, which usually draws about 200 spectators, had typically featured politically neutral speakers, Harper said. Last year’s keynote was delivered by a retired brigadier general.

The committee had approved two other speakers proposed by McDonald: Councilmember Dona Spring and Michael Blecker, the executive director of Swords to Ploughshares, an organization assisting homeless and low-income veterans.

Spring said if the event goes forward she would speak and “do whatever they want me to do.”

Blecker, who did not return phone calls for this story, criticized the Iraq War in a recent address to Bay Area United Against War.

Mitchell, contacted at his home near San Luis Obispo, said the committee’s concerns were misplaced.

“I’m not sure what I would have said, but I’m an intelligent enough guy not to give a raging anti-war speech at a Veterans Day rally,” he said. “It wouldn’t be appropriate.”

Mitchell faulted the committee for not contacting him about the speech.

“I mostly talk about my son and try to get people to see that people are dying in the war,” said Mitchell, adding that he would still be willing to deliver the keynote speech, but only if the committee placed no conditions on what he could say.

Berkeley is one of the few East Bay cities that holds annual Veterans Day commemorations. Alameda County’s biggest event this year will be in the city of Alameda. That city rotates commemorations on a five year cycle with Oakland, San Leandro, Hayward and Fremont.

Although employment of local workers in the multimillion dollar Vista College construction project in Berkeley has jumped dramatically since a Project Labor Agreement (PLA) was put in place, Peralta College district trustees said they were disappointed that more has not been done to include both local workers and minority contractors in the project.

Consultant Jake Sloan of Oakland-based Davillier-Sloan labor management consultants told Peralta trustees last week that employment of local workers by the firms building the new Vista campus—Amoroso Construction and its subcontractors—has jumped from 3.5 percent to 25 percent. However, that number is only half of the 50 percent total local hiring goal in the agreement signed between Peralta and Amoroso.

Davillier-Sloan is under contract with Peralta to assure company compliance with the Project Labor Agreement of the Vista construction project.

Sloan also reported that the hiring of local apprentices for the Vista project has jumped from 0.03 percent to 8 percent of all workers, again short of the 20 percent goal called for in the PLA.

Sloan said that his company had identified six contractors on the Vista project “who we don’t think have made the best effort [for local hiring], and we have identified them as being in apparent non-compliance” with the PLA.

Sloan said that his company plans meetings with those contractors soon, adding that the contractors could be taken to arbitration by the district if they continued to be out of compliance. He did not identify the contractors by name.

With ethnicity-based affirmative action programs virtually outlawed entirely in California, Peralta is using still legally-permissible “local hiring” provisions to stand in for minority hiring goals, since a large percentage of the population in the district’s five-city service area (Oakland, Alameda, Berkeley, Emeryville, and Albany) is minority. In addition, Peralta has policies in place to encourage construction companies under contract to hire minority subcontractors.

Trustee Nicky Gonzalez Yuen asked if it was accurate that only 2 percent of the contract work for the Vista project was being done by African-American workers, a figure he said was given to Peralta trustees earlier this year by an African-American business representative.

“I honestly don’t know,” Sloan told him. “We haven’t been instructed by you to compile that type of information.”

After Sloan said that under the PLA, companies need only prove that they have made a “good faith effort” to comply with the local hiring goals, Trustee Alona Clifton told him it was a “very sad outcome that we have been getting from Amoroso, their good faith effort notwithstanding.”

And trustee Linda Handy said that her biggest concern was about the issue of minority subcontracting, noting that she was “very discouraged to find that these [minority subcontractor] processes are being circumvented by companies waiting until the last minute to fax a request or send information to [minority] companies, making it impossible for them to respond in a timely manner.”

Handy added that “although I am glad to see that compliance numbers are rising, I want to see those numbers at the top of our compliance goals. Even at 25 percent, it’s not enough. It’s not truly representative of the numbers of people in our service area who are paying the taxes that are creating these opportunities.”

With the PLA also calling for 20 percent of the Vista construction jobs to go to apprentices, all of whom should be local residents, Trustee Bill Withrow suggested that the low number of actual local apprentices on the project (8 percent) might be overcome by “feeding people into those jobs from our college vocational programs. Since there’s a shortfall, this should be an opportunity to use the colleges to provide job opportunities for young adults in our service area.”

But Sloan replied it was not that easy, and that local unions often provided an extra hurdle to overcome.

“You can prepare your students to enter apprenticeship programs, but you can’t control the entry into those programs,” he said. “The unions control that.”

Sloan said that while some trade unions operate year-round entry into their apprentice programs, “the trades that we are really focusing on getting local people into—plumbers, electricians, and sheet metal workers, for example—only accept apprentices once per year, and sometimes not that often. Even then, they only accept a certain number.”

Sloan added that some unions, like the Teamsters, don’t operate apprentice programs at all.

He said that the union apprentice programs are “extremely difficult to get through. I went through both college and an apprentice program as a young man, and college was easier. In the apprentice program you have to work every day and go to school at night, and they have very strict rules for absenteeism. After you finish the program, to get on the work list, you have to pass both a written and an oral exam. It’s not easy.”

District staff said that Peralta will soon be hiring a contract compliance officer to assist with the local hiring and minority subcontract provisions of its construction contracts. In addition, under questioning, Trustee Withrow said that Peralta’s newly-hired inspector general could also assist in that effort.

Berkeley landlords can tack an additional seven-tenths of one percent onto the rents they charge tenants, the annual general adjustment rate approved Tuesday by the Rent Stabilization Board.

The figure represents 65 percent of the increase in the Consumer Price Index for the Bay Area during fiscal year 2005, which ended June 30.

The increase doesn’t apply to tenants who occupied their rentals after Jan. 1, 2005 and whose rents were established under the Costa-Hawkins Rental Housing Act.

The board also adopted an emergency regulation that will allow landlords to offer vacant units to disaster victims at below-market rate without forfeiting their right to later raise rents to market rates.

Along with the regulation, board members adopted a resolution applying the new regulation to assist victims of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita to find temporary housing in the city.

Similar measures were adopted by the Oakland City Council on Oct. 4.

Jay Kelekian, the board’s executive director, said the regulation was adopted to ease concerns of landlords who were worried that they would be locked into the lower, unprofitable rates.

“We want to help someone who offers reduced rent to someone who has to wait two months until their FEMA check arrives, or someone else who needs six months to get back on their feet,” Kelekian said.

“We’re also preparing guidelines and a worksheet to help landlords and tenants understand the conditions under which the lower rates are granted,” he said.

Once the negotiated period of low rents passes, landlords will be allowed to raise rates back to market levels, Kelekian added.

“This means we’re back on good financial footing and it’s amazing considering where we were a few years ago,” said Deputy Superintendent Eric Smith.

Like many districts, the BUSD must borrow money to meet payroll while waiting to receive local property tax dollars.

In years when the Alameda County Board of Education did not approve the district’s budget because of high deficits, the district had to borrow the money against other district funds, Smith said.

By issuing a tax secured note, the district can borrow tax free and then re-invest the funds in securities that gain interest. Smith expected the district to net $100,000 in interest income from the transactions.

Once again, the Berkeley Police Department’s public information officers failed to respond to calls from the Daily Planet, this despite an e-mail sent to all regional media promising that Officer Steve Ergo would respond to all calls placed by the media between 4 and 5 p.m. Thursday.

The last time the department responded to calls by deadline on the paper’s production day was Oct. 6›

While many minor issues divide us, on most major issues we stand united. For example, most Americans believe in fairness at the polls. While almost everyone would agree that both sides of a proposition must be allowed to present their case to the voters, Proposition 75 was put on the November ballot simply to silence some of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s harshest critics: our nurses, teachers, police, and firemen. When you slash funding from one side of a debate, the other side has a distinct, unfair advantage. Money buys votes.

I agree that we need to reduce the big buck contributions that fuel our politicians and propositions, but let’s be fair about it. I would fully support legislation limiting the total dollar amount contributed by any individual, corporation, or union to $1,000 per year. With a level playing field, maybe our politicians would start to care more about us, their constituents, than the corporations currently bankrolling their campaigns.

Vote no this November and let’s move forward together—fairly. Ask your state legislator to sponsor and support clean money legislation. Google “clean money” for more information.

Mike Kirchubel

•

POINT PINOLE

Editors, Daily Planet:

Point Pinole Regional Park, where Whitney Dotson stands in the photo in the Daily Planet (Oct. 18), is a place more people should explore. The expansive Breuner marsh that Dotson views in the distance is one of many panoramas in this rare breed of park, one that one goes to, less for the park itself, than for the magnificant views.

There is the Breuner marsh from the south side of the park. The panoramas from the Point Pinole hillside in the middle show the undeveloped shoreline of Marin, while to the north one can gaze on the vast expanse of San Pablo Bay, and the view of the large Whittel marsh on the park’s north east side equals in open space the tranquility seen in your photo of the Breuner marsh. Every effort should be made to save the Breuner marsh from development, not only for the usual reasons of protecting shoreline and stopping urban sprawl, but also for protection of one of the rare places along our bay where you can look in the distance and imagine what our bay was like before urbanization.

Ted Vincent

•

SPORTS FIELDS

Editors, Daily Planet:

If LA Wood has anything to support his/her idea that there is such poor air quality to the west of Interstate 80 at the location where the city is proposing to build the much needed new sports fields that no one should exercise there, please provide it. The city is normally exceedingly cautious about such things. Lots of joggers, bikers, kite flyers and dog walkers currently use the pedestrian bridge, frontage road trail and Chavez Park, not to mention the jockeys who work out every morning at the track. If all LA Wood has is an opinion, so what? Every bay boater knows that the prevailing summertime winds are from the northwest except before an incoming storm when the wind rotates to come from the south. Rarely in the winter there is a north wind. I believe that an off-shore easterly breeze is extremely rare in this area especially in the summer when the fields would be in use. Because of the prevailing northwesterly, the air at the bay shore has traveled a fetch of thousands of miles over the ocean and in my experience is always deliciously fresh at the race track and Chavez Park. It is what is so exhilarating about those places.

Dennis White

•

LESS THAN TASTEFUL

Editors, Daily Planet:

How quickly we forget, so let me be the canary here.

The outrage expressed by letter writers over the proposal to develop the parking lot at Golden Gate Fields, is of course heartening. At least some of us still oppose the deification of sales tax revenues.

But before you glorify the local Sierra Club and Citizens for the Eastshore State Park, can I remind you of their less than tasteful role in all this?

In August 2004, at a public meeting, Norman LaForce, presented the local Sierra Club’s proposal for the development of this very site. LaForce introduced the 325,000-square-foot plan now being proposed. An upscale Fourth Street-type retail and hotel complex, smack on the lips of the state park which LaForce has been so vocal about protecting from off-leash dogs and unleashed art.

The deal which LaForce, CESP, local politicians, Magna Corp. and East Bay Regional Parks crafted involved the ball field portion south of Golden Gate Fields. A bunch of extremely high powered lawyers, businessmen and Sacramento style politicians working together for the betterment of all, right? The payoff for the Sierra Club and other so called environmentalists is that they have wrung some concessions from the developers about “open space” and “habitat preservation.”

But at what cost? To the quality of life for the human beings of this entire area? The reality is that it is the Sierra Club which has brought us the mall at Golden Gate Fields, which will produce more toxic emissions from cars, parking garages, traffic, plastic and Styrofoam than we can possibly imagine.

But the really toxic emissions are from those posing as protectors of the environment, when the only environment they care about is that which precludes human beings.

Jill Posener

•

ISRAEL/PALESTINE

Editors, Daily Planet:

A few weeks ago I argued in these pages that if the Peace and Justice Commission has been packed with persons intent on burying the issue of Palestine/Israel, it is incumbent on the rest of us to engage in dialog about it elsewhere. I suggested that 2006 be proclaimed the “Year of Talking about Israel and Palestine” and that many organizations in the City of Berkeley, both public and private, take part.

I’m pleased to report that my plan appears to be off to a robust start. Of course hats off to Becky O’Malley who continues to publish both news and a wide variety of opinion with regard to this topic. The range and liveliness of the discussion is rare, and I would be surprised if she is not being subjected to considerable pressure to lay off.

But there’s more! Not only has the Middle East Children’s Alliance lined up a great fall series including talks by dissident Israeli professor Ilan Pappe on Oct. 29 and award-winning journalist Robert Fisk on Nov. 19, as well as a performance by the Ibdaa dance troupe from Dheisheh refugee camp in King Auditorium on Nov. 26, but other organizations are getting involved. Friends of the Berkeley Public Library is sponsoring a report back from the West Bank by Wendy Kaufmyn this Sunday, Oct. 23, at 2 p.m. in the main library and the Berkeley Art Center is opening an exhibit on Nov. 6 called “Justice Matters: Young Artists Consider Palestine” (through Dec. 17). Many thanks to all for helping to break the silence.

But if you’re neither Jewish nor Palestinian, why should you care? One, because at least $3 billion of your taxes goes every year to Israel (more foreign aid than to any other country), most of it for buying weapons from the U.S. Some of these weapons are used by Israel, some sold on to other countries, making Israel an essential element of our military-industrial complex. Two, our government’s protection of Israel which permits it to flaunt international law is a primary reason for Arab/Muslim anger with the United States. And three, members of the Bush administration who believed it would benefit Israel are directly responsible for our invasion of Iraq. One, two, three reasons why certain people don’t want the Berkeley Peace and Justice Commission to learn, know, and act. One, two, three reasons why we all must.

Joanna Graham

•

CHAMBER OF COMMERCE

Editors, Daily Planet:

Having just received my mail, in reading the consensus opinions of the leadership of the Berkeley Chamber concerning the November Ballot positions, I find it appalling that this chamber would choose and publish their stand.

I was naive to think the Berkeley Chamber would be more progressive and support or oppose those propositions that would actually benefit the greater public. My position is no on the first six and yes on the last two but I see by your choices, you are selling out our school teachers, firefighters, police, and union members with your support of Propositions 74 and 75. You are willing to give Arnold Schwarzenegger more budgetary power with your support of Prop. 76 when the example of this unnecessary special election is costing taxpayers upwards of $70 million dollars and is only supporting his own power grabbing agenda.

Your support of the gerrymandering, Prop. 77, in a non-census year which is an obvious attempt to get more Republican votes out of California, is beyond reproach. The very crooked party that has nearly bankrupted this country, sent us to an unethical war on Iraq, consistently reduces the benefits of our most needy citizens while giving tax breaks to the wealthiest, endangers the environment with its hideous legislation, etc. is typical of the Republican party along whose lines you are supporting. Then you support Prop. 78 when it clearly is a drug company supported charade to squash Prop. 79 which actually could do some good for our lower income citizens. Last, your opposition to Prop. 80 is ludicrous! Non-regulated energy left the door wide open for the screwing we took from Enron, who incidentally are good friends and supporters both of our governor and the miserable excuse for a president we are suffering under.

Rainbo Graphix will not be a member of any organization that is opposed to the general public interest and you can consider this my cancellation of

membership. I will expect a pro rated check for my dues and I intend to clean up that unknowingly tainted money by donating it toward the defeat of

Propositions 73 through 78.

Beverly Hill

Owner, Rainbo Graphix

Emeryville

•

GUNS AND LIABILITY

Editors, Daily Planet:

The powerful gun lobby is aggressively seeking to pass legislation that will provide unprecedented blanket liability exemption for gun manufacturers and dealers. The gun lobby has pushed for a vote this week that will free them from all responsibility for deaths and injuries resulting from their products. The vote this week is the last chance to stop this reckless bill.

The House leadership, receiving instructions from the gun lobby, has refused to consider the disastrous consequences of this legislation. Particularly outrageous is that, if this bill is passed, a dealer may no longer be held accountable for knowingly selling weapons to terrorist organizations or cop killers. This is disgraceful and demonstrates the lengths to which Republican House Leadership will go to keep the NRA and the gun lobby happy.

Dr. Marc Pilisuk

•

NATIVE AMERICANS

Editors, Daily Planet:

Although I strongly dislike Gov. Schwarzenegger and don’t approve of anything he’s doing, I don’t think that the Native Americans should be so offended over his veto of the bill that would have taken away the name “redskins” from school mascots. “Redskins” is not a bad term and should not be taken as an insult. The settlers called the Native Americans that because the grease and clay they smeared on themselves to prevent mosquitoes from biting and the cold from getting in made their skin look red. I’m sure many people are not aware of this so I thought I’d write it.

Hannah Garrett

•

KATRINA’S

AFTERSHOCKS

Editors, Daily Planet:

When the imbalance of forces in nature makes an adjustment we get a hurricane, earthquake, tsunami, tornado, fire, flood, etc. It becomes a disaster only if it destroys property and kills people. Such destruction may be widespread and short-lived. In its wake, however, there are bumbling aftershocks, tremors of culpable neglect, slides of incompetence, swirls of profiteering and self-centered political spins—acts of God followed by acts of man.

In last year’s season hurricane Ivan destroyed the dream home near Pensacola that my sister and her husband remodeled for their retirement. Rebuilding it cost them nine months of anguish, frustration and effort.

Katrina hit New Orleans with a whammy like that of Ivan and the city might have handled it the way it handled Betsy (1965) and Camille (1969) except that it got hit with extraordinary man-made aftershocks. First, of course, the levees having been allowed to deteriorate collapsed causing a flood that was predictable and predicted. Evacuation was inept and leadership was clumsy.

The president hesitated, complemented the incompetent and dramatized his empty promises in a series of staged scenes. Rescue was haphazard. Desperation smothered civility so that only the fittest could survive. Those who had nowhere to go and no means of getting there were herded like cattle from the purgatory of poverty into the inferno of the Superdome where they served their sentences and then were carried willy-nilly in bunches to safe, far away and unfamiliar locations.

Law enforcement’s self-regard grew frustrated, impotent and ultimately lawless. The physically and mentally impaired, the infants, the aged, the hospitalized and the incarcerated had less to lean on afterwards than before. Money poured in but there was little it could buy. Cruise ships provided housing for the rescuers but none for the rescued. FEMA acquired tens of thousands of trailer homes but couldn’t put them in place, food shipments it couldn’t use and paid millions a day for long-term tenure in short-term accommodations.

My youngest brother and his wife fled New Orleans two days ahead of Katrina. Last week they got their first look at their home; it had been submerged for days in four feet of water and vacant for an additional three weeks. Even before Katrina it was not the home they’d moved into after their wedding because my brother is an energetic and skilled craftsman who added-on for three decades. It grew new bedrooms, new baths, a balcony, a family room, upstairs rooms, a patio, a playground for grandsons. Every inch showed his vision and bore the marks of his toil. It was a place to live in and, like an organism, a living place. But not anymore.

My brother’s post Katrina possibilities are essentially different from our sister’s. She lost the accumulations of a lifetime—photos, books, mementos, heirlooms, clothes, everything. Her retirement is no longer surrounded by things but by memories of things. My brother’s plight is different. The city of New Orleans is in ruins; the aftershock caused ineffable misery and although the city may live again it will never be the same. My brother’s home, an essential part of his life, is likewise in ruins. His anti-Katrina life is gone and memories of it provide at best a flimsy basis for revival.

Marvin Chachere

San Pablo

•

PROP. 73

Editors, Daily Planet:

In California, small-minded men, Republicans and anti-abortionists, have commandeered the initiative process to bring us Prop. 73. In a farcical exploitation, a minority of religious extremists are trying to force parental notification and their viewpoint on the majority of Californians.

Prop. 73 has nothing to do with parental notification but is part of an ongoing effort to roll back Roe v. Wade. Religion has bought the election in efforts to force their lopsided morality on women and teenagers.

Vote no on Nov. 8 and send a message to religious zealots that abortion is none of their business, to remain in their churches, and stay out of a woman’s womb. The decision of abortion is up to a woman, her doctor, her family and her God, not church activists.

Every law restricting women’s reproductive rights—whether in the form of parental notification, limiting the access to emergency contraception—is a step backward and harmful to women.

Ron Lowe

Nevada City

•

BHS REUNION

Editors, Daily Planet:

The Berkeley High School Class of 1975 is putting together a 30th class reunion. The BHS Class of ‘75 30th reunion will be held at the Doubletree-Berkeley Marina on Dec. 31. We have a great night planned so be sure to reserve a spot early. The reunion will begin at 7 p.m., dinner at 8 p.m. and then partying until 1 a.m. We will have dinner, dancing, drinks, and a few surprises! There will be a full-service, no host bar all evening and free champagne at midnight. If you would like to stay at the hotel, you may call them directly at (510) 548-7920, tell them you are with the BHS reunion and they will offer you a discounted rate.

You may confirm your attendance by joining classmates.com (no charge to be a basic member) or e-mail Marcia (Edelstien) Cunha at mlc22@sbcglobal.net or Amanda (Fahle) Ellis at AMANDA757@aol.com. Please send us e-mail addresses of any alumni who may not be members of classmates.com. We are trying to locate as many class members as possible!

Bangkok, Thailand—You may have noticed that the neo-conservatives surrounding the Bush administration have quit crowing about the new “American Empire.” They’ve been in retreat ever since it became apparent that the Iraqi occupation was a catastrophe, a blunder so ghastly that even stalwart Republicans such as Henry Kissinger and Reagan-era National Security Agency director Lieutenant General William Odom called it “the greatest strategic disaster in United States history.”

Of course, this wasn’t the only administration blunder, just the most notorious in a string that includes plunging the nation into deep debt, weakening our national security, ignoring the consequences of global climate change, and so on. Here in Asia, the Bush blunder that gets all the attention is what masquerades as China policy: the tactical ambivalence that on the one hand treats the People’s Republic as the new market frontier and on the other hand as the last bastion of the evil empire.

Bangkok newspaper headlines are not about “Plamegate” or whether Bush’s Christian buddy, Harriet, will get to sit on the Supreme Court. There’s not even much reportage about Iraq—there are terrorists in the south of Thailand who are competing for attention. The big news here is the Bush administration’s feeble attempts to reign in the Chinese tiger. Treasury Secretary John Snow is in China attempting to get Beijing to make economic changes that will reduce the U.S. trade deficit; high on the administration’s wish list are revaluation of the yuan and opening China’s financial market to foreign banks.

While he was lobbying, unsuccessfully, on these issues, Snow gave the Chinese some advice: they should quit saving as much and take on more debt. In other words, the Chinese should run their economy as we do ours: adopt the monetary policy “don’t worry, be happy.”

The Beijing leaders thanked Snow and Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan for their visit, but gave no indication that they would follow their advice. Why should the Chinese rulers change their economic policies? Their society is prospering; mammoth skyscrapers and huge new cities are popping up across the country—they’re the world’s largest producer and consumer of steel and cement—and their 1.3 billion citizens are rapidly transforming from docile peasants into ferocious consumers. Asian observers of US-China relations, believing that in the global game of poker Beijing now holds all the cards, ask, “Why is the Bush administration so clueless about China?”

The answer lies in the reality that George W. has no interest in actually governing America. Karl Rove calls the shots about American policy, strictly from a political perspective. As a result, the Bush administration has no strategic plan for China—they are shooting from the hip, day after day. The inherent danger in this lackadaisical attitude is that unless American develops a strategy to cope with China’s growth, we will wake up in a couple of decades and find that it’s Beijing that’s talking about empire, while Americans are forced to accept their new status as a has-been power.

America should respond to China by, first, recognizing that we live in a world far different from that envisioned by the neo-conservatives, who are obsessed with cold-war symbols and strategies. China is not Russia. Beijing spends much less on defense than does the United States. However, it graduates significantly more engineers and scientists than America, is our largest creditor, and also does more of our manufacturing than we do. The Chinese are busy developing trading partnerships all across Asia, while the United States remains focused on building airfields and forging military alliances.

America needs a strategic vision to guide it in the 21st century. We need a plan that recognizes that the United States is no longer in an arms race, but in a global economic competition; one where it’s not what you threaten, but what you produce that sways the other nations.

While there are many aspects of such a strategy, one place to start would be retention of a strategic manufacturing capability. For example, we don’t need to retain a lot of semiconductor plants, but it makes sense to ensure that the most advanced products that Americans design are being built on semiconductor lines within the United States. Furthermore, we must revitalize our cities; if we let our communities decay, then we can expect the most valued segment of the modern work force—so-called knowledge workers—to opt to live elsewhere. They will move out of the U.S. to countries where there are healthy cities with affordable housing, good schools, reliable public transportation, and reasonably priced healthcare.

The dream of American empire may be gone, but that doesn’t mean that the United States is finished as a world power or that we have to take a backseat to China or any other nation. However, recovering from neoconservative grandiosity does mean that we have the vision required for a new strategy for America. And that’s our problem: the Bush Administration is incapable of providing the leadership we need.

Bob Burnett is a Berkeley writer and activist. He can be reached at bobburnett@comcast.net. This article also appeared in the Huffington Post.

To appreciate the possibilities of a legalized sideshow in Oakland, you have to put aside the preconceptions that have been built upon the five-year history of the illegal street sideshow movement. Instead, you must go back to the way things were before the Oakland Police Department chased the sideshows out of the parking lots and into the streets.

In the 1990s and before, the sideshows were late-night outdoor gatherings of African-American young adults in East Oakland parking lots-first at Eastmont Mall, and later at Pac ‘n Save on Hegenberger, on the way to the airport. These young people were not interested in breaking the law or running from police or terrorizing the community-what they wanted was a safe space, in their own neighborhoods, where they could gather to show off their “tight” cars, play music, and socialize.

The “showing off their cars” part sometimes involved doing “donuts” (an East Oakland car sport that goes back decades, long before the sideshows). But “donuts” were a relatively small part of the original sideshows, which were more leisurely, picnic-like events than the 15-minute street corner affairs we’ve come to know. More often the “showing off their cars” thing in the original, parking lot sideshows involved fixing up cars with special rims or wheels or paintjobs, stereos in the trunk, home theaters in the dashboard, two-toned shag carpeting on the seats and floors and ceiling, and the like-the kind of thing you see on the “Pimp Your Ride” show. These parking lot sideshows were traditional courtship rituals, what you find in every human culture and most animal societies, where the males try to outdo themselves in showing off their prowess and talents to appreciative young females. In the animal world, male peacocks display the largest, gaudiest, brightest tailfeathers. In the original, parking lot sideshows, young men vied for female attention by displaying the largest, gaudiest, brightest cars. It was a natural, normal, rite of passage and it bothered almost no-one, not the owners of the parking lots, nor the people in the neighborhoods where it took place. And they were a welcome antidote to the horrific violence taking place at the time on Oakland’s streets.

Award-winning Oakland documentary filmmaker Yakpazua Zazaboi once described coming over from Daly City in 1993 and encountering the Eastmont Mall sideshows for the first time: “It was just black folks and cars everywhere. It filled up the whole lot, all down there by Taco Bell and where the old McDonald’s used to be. People was walking around just talking. Having fun. And the thing that made me fall in love with it was the fact that here we are in Oakland, but was from the other side of the bay that was supposedly feuding with Oakland at that time, but people weren’t tripping off any of that. They weren’t looking at us as if we were a threat. They was more like a welcoming thing, like, ‘Man, you see us, now get out the car and be with us.’”

After Oakland police shut down the parking lot sideshows and pushed them into Oakland’s streets, setting up the wild, frantic, illegal affairs we so often see on newsclips, Zazaboi and some of his friends spent several years trying to win official support for a legal, sanctioned sideshow venue in the city of Oakland. Their idea was to hold a legalized sideshow in some enclosed arena where people would pay a small fee to enter, hip hop music would be played all over the area, food and beverages would be sold, and auto accessory vendors would pay a fee to operate booths. One entire location would be set aside for people to park novelty cars and show off their accessories. Another area would be a fenced-off arena, safe from spectators, where stunt drivers could do car tricks, among them the traditional “donuts” and other auto maneuvers that we see so much on the evening news. As Zazaboi described it several years ago, the events would be something like an “auto fair” or an “auto rodeo,” generating tax money for Oakland and promoting entrepreneurship among African-American Oakland youth who had been long marginalized by their native city. But attempts to hold those legalized sideshows were consistently blocked by top Oakland city officials.

Zazaboi’s major fear, however, has not that the legalized sideshows would never take place in Oakland, but that the idea would be taken over by some outside promoter who would steal the idea, come into Oakland and reap all the profits, giving nothing back to either the community or the people who created the original venues

Earlier this month, that’s exactly what happened. Not in Oakland, but nearby, at the Alameda County Fairgounds in Pleasanton.

There, on a sunny Saturday afternoon, a Southern California-based group of promoters called Vision Entertainment held what they call both “Hot Import Daze” and “Hot Import Nights,” which is a legalized sideshow in everything but name.

Who is Vision entertainment? I don’t know, but you can see their website yourself at www.hotimportdaze.com/. (be sure to turn down the volume when you do). A promotional paragraph on the website explains what they’re doing: “Now in its ninth year, Hot Import Nights (HIN) is positioned at the forefront of the sport compact car culture. Hot Import Nights is the leading lifestyle car show featuring hundreds of thousands of attendees, hundreds of the nations top show cars, hundreds of exhibitors, and the nation’s top DJ’s, artists, models and musicians. Consisting of more than 20 events throughout the United States, Hot Import Nights has taken the import scene to new heights, attracting record numbers in cities across the nation and setting a new standard for car shows.”

At the Pleasanton event, the HID-HIN promoters blocked out areas across the Alameda County Fairgrounds yard where car owners competed in contests to show off their engines and accessories. Vendor booths were everywhere, presumably paying a fee to the promoters for the privilege of access to the hundreds of consumers passing by. In the outdoor arena that was temporarily renamed the “urban stage,” hip hop and break dancers and deejays also competed for prizes. On another stage, young women in bikinis strutted in what looked like a scene from a spring break video. In an area of the parking lot, concrete barriers had been erected in a circle, and a group of Japanese national (not Japanese American) stunt drivers were showing off maneuvers called “sliding,” many of them very similar-but far inferior-to the “siding” and the “donuts” that you see on East Oakland streets.

From boom boxes all across the fairgrounds, the sounds of black hip hop entertainers blasted forth-Ludacris to Naz to Nelly. But these recorded artists comprised almost the entire black presence at the event. There were crowds of young white folks, Latinos, and Asian-Americans among the hundreds-perhaps thousands-I witnessed as I walked through the crowd (paying $20 a head to enter the fairgrounds gates), but only a small handful of African-Americans here and there. I don’t know how the “Hot Import Daze-Nights” Alameda County event was advertised. Unlike the days of the 1950’s segregation, no-one put up a sign saying “No Colored Allowed.” But modern marketing is compartmentalized, targeted to the nth degree by what events you leaflet and what radio stations you advertise on, and so either the Alameda County event organizers chose not to target African-Americans in Alameda County, or else the targeting was so bad that most young African-American car and hip hop enthusiasts chose not to attend.

In any event, let us not dwell on the negative. Instead, let us focus on the fact that the Hot Import Daze-Nights promoters showed that a legalized sideshow is not only possible in the area, but can be highly successful. After this, what reason can Oakland city officials give for denying their promotion by Oakland entrepreneurs inside the city?

Already during 2005, millions of human beings trapped by natural disasters have been saved through the rapid response of United Nations agencies. U.N. workers have, often at great risk to themselves, physically delivered differing types of lifelines—food, medical supplies, and shelter—to victims of the tsunami in the Pacific, Hurricane Katrina and hurricane Rita here in the United States, and most recently, the devastating 7.6 earthquake in Pakistan. Were it not for the capability of the U.N. to carry out humanitarian efforts in any part of the world on a moment’s notice, the resulting loss of life and land might well have negatively impacted millions more.

The media typically spotlight the more catchy U.N. news stories about bureaucratic inefficiencies and allegations of wrong-doing at the U.N. Fair enough: it seems you have to accept that when you’re an organization with little policing power taking orders from 191 member nations. The end result of emphasis on the U.N.’s weaknesses means little room for exposure of its strong accomplishments.

Let’s be specific. When Hurricane Katrina struck, it took a couple of days for the U.S. to begin to send in help. The United Nations stepped up to the plate with an offer of help, which President Bush publicly accepted. And so it came about that the United States was, for the first time in its history, a recipient of aid from the United Nations, through two different U.N. agencies.

The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), headed by an extraordinarily capable Under-Secretary-General Jan Egeland (a UC Berkeley alum, incidentally), met with administration officials and arranged for the U.N.’s crisis teams to go to work. A day or so later, former U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Ann Veneman, currently serving as UNICEF’s Executive Director, publicly offered the US government UNICEF teaching kits for 300,000 U.S. schoolkids suddenly far from home and school. That educational lifeline provided a way for displaced schoolkids to keep up their education and also, incidentally, helped calm them as they engaged in familiar tasks.

Came the Pakistan earthquake and Jan Egeland, coordinator of disaster relief efforts of several U.N. agencies (the High Commissioner for Refugees, UNICEF, the World Health Organization, and the World Food Programme) quickly flew into Pakistan and requested that President Musharraf lift all customs restrictions on incoming supplies, and provide three-month visas to aid workers. It was done. The work proceeds.

The U.N. World Food Programme, one of the U.N.’s most efficient agencies, quickly supplied emergency foodstuffs to 37,000 people in Pakistan. The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees speedily brought in 15,000 tents and 220,000 blankets—absolute necessities for sustaining life in that part of the world as winter begins. UNICEF is bringing in water treatment plants. The World Health Organization has deployed 11 surgical teams, and is providing essential medicines for 210,000 people for one month. All that was done. Quickly. Lives were saved.

As impressive as those statistics are, no one can promise that sufficient amounts of aid will actually reach all those who need help in time.

I fully support UC’s removal of the clothing box at People’s Park. That the free box was an effective distribution system for used clothing for the poor is an illusion. After the ambitious entrepreneurs had taken the best clothes for resale, the rest were ruined, usually within hours, by rain, dirt, and careless handling. Thus the noble experiment became, ironically, a continuing demonstration of “Darwinian” capitalism and waste—two things supporters of the free box surely decry.

I too am sorry the experiment didn’t work out, but it didn’t. And for the many nearby residents not directly benefiting from it, most of whom are themselves lower-income people already tolerating more than their share of litter, visual clutter, and social “vibrancy,” the box became the very definition of an “(un)attractive nuisance,” detracting further from their marginal urban environment.

I like the concept of a free clothing exchange—or for that matter, the free exchange of all “previously owned” items in our over-consuming society; it would be very nice if this were possible. Flea markets and garage sales are the closest thing we have to this; then come the nonprofit thrift stores such as the Salvation Army and Goodwill. To administer these in an organized manner that serves both patrons and donors requires work and resources, so they are not free.

I understand that even their low prices may be too high for some people. Unfortunately, however, there can be no benign “free” exchange of goods in the public sphere because any such activity, in order to remain effective and non-detrimental, requires substantial organization and policing; this takes money and/or the relentless volunteer services of capable, dedicated people. Except for the (inadequate) managing and cleanup of the free box site provided involuntarily by the taxpayers, that oversight was missing at People’s Park, with the result that the exchange benefited a few but was damaging to everyone else.

If, however, some charitable person or organization wishes to provide such a service, and will accept legal responsibility for running the program properly and assuring that it is not detrimental to the community (I think some churches already provide similar services), I am sure some altruistic council member will be happy to volunteer a location in his or her district that is appropriate for a clothing exchange. I suggest that Southside not be considered again at this time, since Southside has provided this service for several decades now. It’s only fair to give some other neighborhood an opportunity to facilitate this excellent idea, once the bugs are worked out. Any volunteers?

People’s Park, a Berkeley landmark, has a tradition of free exchange. The tradition of sharing food, sharing music, trading clothing, giving away helpful information (and yes, sometimes love) without compensation is more than 35 years old. The freebox, one of the best examples of this tradition, is simply a box into which one puts old or simply unwanted items for the next person to use, and takes whatever interests them.

The university has recently threatened a group of community gardeners and park supporters wishing to replace the traditional freebox. Reconstruction efforts are suddenly surrounded by police who videotape everyone’s every move, and tensions are high enough that community residents and city officials currently share a concern about keeping the peace.

Before the situation becomes more heated, here is some information about the freebox tradition.

“The freebox is for the poor.” Not true. The freebox is for everyone. As you drop something off, you might see a jacket that interests you just because of its pretty color. Try it on, enjoy it for a time, and put it back in the box when you’re done.

“The freebox is for clothes.” How silly. The freebox is for books, dolls, toys, kitchen items, anything you don’t plan to use that you suddenly see is simply taking up space in your life. Let someone else enjoy it for awhile, and save yourself a trip to the recycling center.

“It’s wrong to sell the freebox clothes.” This is silly, too. The freebox in People’s Park gets so many donations that the people who grab an armful of clothing to try to resell it for money (and good luck with that) are a blessing. If the next guy wants to make quilts out of clothing, that’s all right too, and no longer the business of the donor. Some people have deliberately donated signed T-shirts from celebrities hoping somebody noticed the signature and either had a really great day or made a bundle on EBay.

“It’s wrong to take clothes for yourself.” Not true. The freebox is a great place to get inspiration for the Halloween costume of your dreams.

“It’s wrong to take clothes for others.” Again, who makes this stuff up? When you see the purple wig you know would make your friend’s heart dance, just sitting there in the freebox, take it.

“The clothes are just for wearing; for instance, you shouldn’t take the shoelaces out of the shoes.” This may be inconvenient for people who want the shoes with laces intact, but one local doll-maker used to do this and create fabulously inventive artwork. Quilts, artwork, it is all okay.

“The freebox is a ‘park’ thing.” Not entirely. The park’s surrounding blocks often sprout cardboard freeboxes from time to time, and other more durable freeboxes exist in west, south, and north Berkeley.

“The people who congregate around the freebox are selfish, aggressive crackheads.” You’ll hear this a lot, but if at times it’s true, it’s beside the point. Selfish, aggressive people get to use the freebox, and the park, and the streets, and the sidewalks. That’s life. But we’re not rolling up the streets because we don’t like some of the people walking by. The absence of the freebox for the last six months didn’t cure the world of selfishness or drug abuse, if that’s what the university thought would happen, so there’s no need to deprive the park of its

traditions. The answer to selfishness might be more, rather than less, freeboxes.

“The freebox needs to be cleaned up and supervised.” Maybe. If so, the park has never in its entire history had so many paid staff members and volunteers at the ready to do just that if they weren’t so busy tossing armloads of clean, useable clothing in the dumpsters and locking them down. But it would be a worthy experiment, alternatively, to allow interested community members to build, plant, play, and create in the park without the current constant threat of arrest or SLAPP-suit action, allowing the park’s natural community to reconvene and help out. Lots of people mess up the clothes, but lots of others fold them. It’s kind of like the sweater piles at the GAP stores, except nobody gets paid.

“The university just hates the freebox.” Again, maybe. Maybe the university just hates the park, too. But maybe we’ve also come a long way as a community, and maybe we’re capable of working out our differences without arrests, lawsuits, and violence. Understanding the freebox as a tradition is a small, but worthy first step.

Laura Menard’s letter in your Oct. 18 edition about the small claims law suit against Lenora Moore contains allegations and insinuations, which require a response, tedious as the task may be.

Menard:

While it is “absolutely true” that defendant Moore is relying heavily on outside counsel “that is not the case for the plaintiffs.”

The Facts:

The 15 plaintiffs are relying heavily on Neighborhood Solutions, an organization specializing in bringing mass small claims law suits against property owners. According to an article in the February 2003 edition of the MacArthur Metro that organization has a staff attorney, Kathleen Aberegg. The head of Neighborhood Solutions, Grace Neufeld testified in court that she sought legal advice in drafting a demand letter on behalf of the plaintiffs. Their response to a motion to dismiss by Ms. Moore cited legal authority. They’re not wanting for legal assistance.

Menard:

“Moore has given responsibility of her defense to attorney Osha Neumann and paralegal Leo Stegman, both employed by East Bay Community Law Center and organizers of CopWatch.”

The Facts:

I have not been “given responsibility” for her defense. Parties can not be represented by a lawyer in small claims court actions. The law permits a lawyer “to provide advice to a party.” I have done that. I have also put considerable energy into trying to open up a dialogue with the plaintiffs about a real "neighborhood solution” to the problems of drug activity—so far with no success. Leo Stegman, who is not a lawyer, is assisting Ms. Moore as the law allows when the court determines that a party cannot properly present his or her claim or defense and needs assistance. Ms. Menard’s reference to CopWatch is, of course, gratuitous. I have assisted Copwatch and support their work, but am not an “organizer” for them. Incidentally my work on this case has nothing to do with the East Bay Community Law Center. I am not on the staff of that organization. I have a contract with them to work for a limited number of hours supervising legal clinics serving homeless and low income members of our community.

Menard:

“ . . .desperate to place responsibility anywhere but where it belongs, Neumann suggests it is the fault of the district attorney for not prosecuting enough. . .

The Facts:

Sometimes responsibility for neighborhood problems “belongs” in more than one place. Plaintiffs allege that Ms. Moore has permitted members of her family to sell drugs in her neighborhood. They complain that her children and grandchildren come back to the neighborhood even after they have been arrested and convicted. I wondered why the district attorney did not impose a stay away order from the neighborhood as a condition of probation or parole. I was told the district attorney thought the defendants lived with Ms. Moore and couldn’t be barred from their home. They don’t live with her. The district attorney was mistaken.

Menard:

Neumann “complains that the neighbors are negligent for not calling the police.”

The Facts:

Under pressure of the lawsuit Ms. Moore took out restraining orders against seven of her own children and grandchildren. The plaintiffs argued the restraining orders were ineffective because Ms. Moore was reluctant to enforce them. What the plaintiffs didn’t seem to know is that they don’t have to wait for Ms. Moore to call the police. They can do so themselves if they observe a violation of the orders. I let them know this was the case in a letter and mentioned it in court.

Menard:

Neumann “devised a new defense, suggesting elder abuse, without giving any evidence.”

The Facts:

The restraining orders obtained by Ms. Moore are authorized under an act specifically designed to prevent elder and dependent adult abuse. By issuing the restraining orders the court found that she was an elder who had suffered such abuse. That’s not something I invented. She can not control the behavior of her children even though she may lose her home because of their behavior There are many victims in this case. This law suit will do nothing to help any of them.

I am a resident of South Berkeley. I have been assisting Lenora Moore in presenting her defense. In the Lenora Moore case I feel that the plaintiffs have displayed a sense of privilege and entitlement. Not only are they trying to get Ms. Moore to sell her family home through the small claims court process, but they have attacked anybody that is assisting Ms. Moore in defending herself.

Reasonable minds can disagree about complex issues such as how we want to deal with crime, homelessness and people with mental health problems in our neighborhoods. There are 15 plaintiffs who have filed a lawsuit Ms. Moore. They have filed a plethora of legal documents with the assistance of Neighborhood Solutions Inc., yet they imply that Ms. Moore is not entitled to the same type of legal assistance that they have received. Under the law, she is entitled to have her day in court, and the small claims court commissioner has determined she is entitled to legal assistance. Ms. Moore is a taxpayer, a homeowner, a resident of Berkeley and a citizen. She should be afforded the same rights that all of her neighbors enjoy.

As an African-American Berkeley progressive I feel that we should first talk to each other to find a solution to problems in the neighborhood. Litigation and law enforcement should be a last step, not the first one. The plaintiffs seem to want these proceedings to be no more that a formality. Their sense of entitlement is shocking.

They fail to see Ms. Moore’s suffering. She is 75 years old, has a part-time job, is the caretaker of her disabled husband and legal guardian of her two grandsons. She has been an active member in her community. She has worked for and helped to start non-profits that provide services to the underserved and underprivileged South Berkeley community. She does not use or sell drugs, and nobody has accused her of this conduct. She has not benefited from any illegal activity. On the contrary, she has suffered seeing several of her family members with substance abuse problems, two of her sons in prison, and the violent death of a grandson. As a mother, grandmother and community member she has suffered witnessing drug sales and use in her community, and is well aware of how they adversely affect people.

The plaintiffs attempt to paint her as the second coming of Ma Barker. This depiction could not be further from the truth. When we state facts on her behalf, they don’t dispute the facts. They demonize Ms Moore and the presenter of the facts. They imply that she should submit and surrender to their demands to sell her home. The small claims court is an adversarial forum that they have chosen, and they act as if Ms. Moore is committing a crime just by defending herself in this matter.

I became involved in this case to assist Ms. Moore in setting the facts straight and having her day in Court. There are 15 plaintiffs against Ms. Moore that have substantially more means and human resources to present their case than she does. This is why members of the progressive community have decided to assist her in her defense. South Berkeley is a very diverse community. At Ms. Moore’s Oct. 13 court appearance every plaintiff except one appeared to me to be White. This group of plaintiffs by no means represents a racial cross section of South Berkeley. A rational person that understands gentrification cannot turn a blind eye to the racial make up of this group of plaintiffs and the race of the defendant, and we must see the plaintiffs’ demand for Ms. Moore to sell her longtime family home in this context.

I don’t feel there is a judicial solution to Ms. Moore’s personal problems and the problems of the neighborhood. This lawsuit has a polarizing effect, and is not being pursued in a spirit of neighborliness. I have not seen any documents from any of the plaintiffs showing that they would accept any outcome of their conflict with her short of her selling her family home.

Most of the time when you try to dictate a solution to others it tends not to be effective. I feel that the time, effort and energy put into this lawsuit would be better spent getting all the parties and relevant agencies together to find a common sense non-litigious solution.

In his Oct. 4 Daily Planet commentary, “New Owners Did Not Fire Honda Workers,” Chris Regalia is technically correct. All that is required to follow his argument and absolve the new Berkeley Honda management of responsibility for the plight of the former Jim Doten workers and the continuing picket line and demonstrations is to enter the realm where angels dance on the heads of pins.

On May 22, Jim Doten wrote a letter to all his employees, saying that he had the “unpleasant task of having to terminate all employees,” that they had the right to apply for the continuation of their jobs, and adding that he believed “you will find the new owners very pleasant to work with.”

The Machinists’ Union, which represents most of the dealership’s workers, had made a modest request, that the new owners retain the workforce for 100 days on a trial basis and evaluate how they perform. It seems clear to me that if individual performance were really the issue, the offer would have been accepted. Instead, they were fired. That in a formal sense Jim Doten rather than Tim Beinke fired them misses the point completely. In order to consummate the sale, Doten did the dirty work for the new owners. This obviously was the arrangement.

Indeed all employees were given very brief interviews. Of 26 union members, 15 were not rehired, and 11 were. Many of those who were retained decided to leave and strike for two reasons: out of solidarity with their longtime work-mates now without jobs, and because they believed they were training their $12-an-hour replacements, fresh from technical school. They felt that soon they risked being left out of work, with their union severely weakened or gone as well.

Regalia implies that those who were not rehired were not “top performers” or “efficient.” What about the 31-year veteran Gold Level Honda-certified mechanic who just happened to be the shop steward of the union? Is that a mere coincidence?

As for those wonderful 401-Ks that Beinke unilaterally substituted for the defined benefit pension plan Doten workers formerly had: There are some people--evidently Regalia is one--who might prefer a 401-K, where income rises and falls with the stock market. But many people, myself included, prefer a dependable, guaranteed amount. In any case, those offered work at the New Berkeley Honda weren’t given a choice.

I spoke recently with one of those offered a job at $3-an-hour above his former wage. He was three years short of eligibility for a pension worth retiring on under the old plan, and he asked if they would be willing to put in writing that he could work long enough to qualify for the equivalent status in the new 401-k retirement package. He was told no, they couldn’t do that, and the subject was quickly changed.

As for the “corporate citizenship,” “family” atmosphere and contributions to the community touted by Regalia and in Berkeley Honda’s recent half-page Planet ad, I reply that decency and fairness begin in one’ s own back yard.

And I refer you to Raymond Barglow’s wonderful Daily Planet letter (Oct. 7): “Let’ s make that community an authentic one and give the fired workers our support”--regardless of who, technically, did the firing.

This fall the City Council will consider a ordinance restricting the Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC), so as to prevent landmarking cranks—as defined in the pages of the San Francisco Chronicle and East Bay Express, as well as by big-time builders and real estate speculators—from historifying more “ugly” buildings-also as defined by the above. As an erstwhile crank, I thought I might spill my story.

Like taking that first drink, it all started innocently enough. In 2003 my wife Lise and I were notified that a local real estate developer had bought the two old Victorians next to ours on Sixth Street. He wanted to merge the lots and build four to six units; the plans showed boxy multiplexes that we thought further eroded an 1880s neighborhood. We met with him, got rebuffed, and decided to see if there were any rules about tearing down old houses. At that point we knew not the LPC from the lawn bowling commission.

We hoped the Planning Department might counsel citizens about landmarking procedures, and could mediate the likely conflicts between neighbors and developers. The city planner assigned to our case asked why we didn’t like pretty new buildings. We replied that the neighborhood was from the 1880s, and was already being encroached upon by Walnut Creek-style condos. She replied: “I’m from Planning, I don’t know anything about history.” This adversarial omen was confirmed at our first LPC meeting; not only Planning but the city attorney and a portion of the LPC viewed us as impediments to “progress.” Later on from a Machiavellian viewpoint, we could say: “OK, Planning get hefty fees from the developers, whereas the neighbors just get in their way.”

I had been an activist but on foreign policy and social justice issues. While we worked for progressive city candidates—including Tom Bates—we did this knowing little of the workings of city government. I knew there was a bureaucracy—I had bumped heads with them while at Berkeley Mental Health for 20 years, and later on with the Mental Health Board. But with a Berkeley-kind of hubris I assumed that our apparatchniks reflected liberal values.

And I ignored an early land-use experience while on the steering committee of BCA (the organization of local progressives.) We had opposed a development at Rose and Shattuck, one that eliminated the only gas station and mechanic in the area, and was already a difficult intersection. To my surprise heavy arm-twisting came down from BCA-held city hall. I shrugged off the experience, joked that after all, Berkeley was not Chicago—real estate interests can’t have that much clout here.

Lise and I went ahead with a petition to landmark a district of 11 houses on Sixth, Addison, and Fifth Streets. We went door-to-door collecting the necessary 50 signatures, met many neighbors for the first time, and began to realize just how remarkable was this collection of “working man” Victorians, literally from the horse and buggy days.

A year or so later, after many LPC meetings, phone calls, e-mails, looking through archives at the Bancroft Library, BAHA, and even the Mormon Temple, this effort culminated on March 1, 2004, in the declaration of the Sisterna Tract Block 106 Historic District by the LPC. They had received a copiously illustrated 48-page report, now in the city history section of the Berkeley Public Library. I say this to other would be landmarkers, as it would have helped us to have seen such a document. It was composed by Lise, Sarah Satterlee, and 14 other volunteers, including an architect, a woodworker and an urban archaeologist.

At the celebration party Lise said, (quoted in the Daily Planet on March 9, 2004): “Usually, when people think of Berkeley, they think in terms of the university, or Maybecks in the hills. But this district grew out of a fascination with the discovery of a rich, unexpected history, peopled with immigrants, often Spanish speaking—such as the Chilean Sisterna—driven from distant homelands by poverty, famine, and oppression. This was a record of a working class town that began before there was a gown (UC).”

What she didn’t say at the party was that this was won over the dead body of City Planning, and that the LPC was hardly filled with historicizing zealots. We eked out a 5-4 vote by dint of persistent neighborhood turnout at long meetings. The commissioners seemed to lean over backwards accommodating real estate speculators and their retinue of lawyers and architects. The LPC proved timid in challenging the Planning Dept., despite its obvious bungles, such as chronic failure to notify neighbors of meetings.

The tax revenue hungry city, pushed by the real estate/building lobby, touts the new ordinance as reining in a LPC run by typical Berkeley nuts—the kind the corporate media loves to portray. The real problem lies in the opposite direction. We had been astonished to learn later—not from Planning or the LPC—that other cities actually encourage historic and neighborhood preservation. Berkeley, despite the liberal image we all love, has yet to do so.

The line of great jazz trumpeters, young men with a horn, begins with the legendary New Orleans cornetist Buddy Bolden. You can read a brilliantly fictionalized account of his life in Michael Ondaatje’s 1976 novel Coming Through Slaughter.

Although Bolden never recorded and from 1907 until his death in 1931 was institutionalized in a mental hospital, those who heard him agreed that he had great volume, a talent for beautiful ornamentation and a profound feeling for playing the blues on the brass horn.

Bolden’s proto-jazz playing influenced the next generation of players like King Oliver and Freddie Keppard, masters of the four-bar break. It was when Oliver wrote to young Louis Armstrong asking him to leave New Orleans to join his band in Chicago that jazz as we know it was born.

Armstrong himself influenced tens of thousands of musicians directly (and millions indirectly), and among them were dozens of brilliant ‘30s swing trumpeters, veritable gods on earth, like Hot Lips Page, Cootie Williams, Red Allen, Buck Clayton, Jonah Jones, Bill Coleman, Harry Edison, Rex Stewart, Joe Thomas, Ray Nance, Benny Carter, Charlie Shavers, Doc Cheatham and especially Roy Eldridge. Although this list may seem obscure, in a sane world, streets would be named after these artists and their monikers would be more famous than those of presidents.

Eldridge was the link between Armstrong and Dizzy Gillespie, between swing and bop. Dizzy even took Roy’s chair in the Cab Calloway orchestra. By the ‘40s, Diz was the leadi ng trumpeter in jazz, the trend setter, and the only alternative styles in bebop were those of Fats Navarro, more directly influenced by saxophonist Charlie Parker, and Miles Davis, who went to Lester Young, Billie Holiday and Thelonious Monk for his ins p iration.

By 1950 Navarro was dead of tuberculosis compounded by his heroin addiction, but he had a successor in his young friend Clifford Brown. Dizzy Gillespie said that Clifford picked up from Fats all the things that he, Dizzy, was not doing with t he trumpet. Clifford Brown will be celebrating his 75th birthday on Oct. 30. That is, he would be celebrating it if he had not been tragically killed in a car crash in 1956 along with pianist Richie Powell, Bud’s younger brother, and Powell’s pregnant wif e Nancy, who was driving.

Clifford had grown up in Wilmington, Delaware and by his late teens was driving to Philadelphia to play with Fats, Dizzy and Bird. Ominously, he lost a year in 1950 when he was hospitalized after a serious auto accident. He firs t recorded in 1952 and was soon included on sessions with the bop arranger Tadd Dameron and drummer Art Blakey.

His greatest recordings were made during the last two years of his life as a member of drummer Max Roach’s quintet along with tenor saxophoni st Sonny Rollins and Powell. This was among the most important jazz combos of all time, the quintessential hard bop band. Here Powell was able to give free rein to his virtuosity, lyricism, gorgeous warm, sweet tone and fluent ideas. For a brief instant t he se giants flashed across the sky, spurring each other on to record perfect extended masterpieces like “Pent-up House,” “Valse Hot” and “I Remember April.” These performances were at once free flights of the imagination and seamlessly coherent creations. T heir emphasis on thematic improvisation changed the direction of jazz.

Following the accident, Max Roach had a virtual nervous breakdown. The remaining members of the quintet went their separate ways. A special moment in jazz history was lost. After Clifford’s death, tenor saxophonist Benny Golson wrote the elegiac “I Remember Clifford” in memory of his late friend. It has since become a jazz standard.

Now, in honor of the diamond anniversary of Clifford’s birth, Golson, a master composer, arranger and performer in his own right, comes to Yoshi’s along with trumpeters Arturo Sandoval, Randy Brecker, Jeremy Pelt and Valery Ponomarev and a rhythm section of the Mulgrew Miller Trio to pay homage to the man who had the most beautiful sound and most inve ntiv e ideas on the trumpet after Louis Armstrong.

The tunes played will be either Clifford’s compositions or from his repertoire, along with pieces like Golson’s elegy that have become associated with Brown. You can also expect a good old-fashioned cutting c ontest to break out when these four top-rated trumpeters take the bandstand together. That would certainly make it a happy birthday for Clifford.

Photograph: Tenor saxophonist Benny Golson wrote “I Remember Clifford” in memory of his late friend.

The United Nations Day Peace Concert Committee and the Oakland East Bay Symphony will present “A Concert for Peace and Humanity” this Sunday at the Oakland Paramount Theatre.

The 7 p.m. concert, celebrating the 60th anniversary of the founding of the United Nations and the centennial of the late Dag Hammerskjold, second U.N. Secretary-General who died in 1961 on a peace mission to the Congo, is a UNICEF benefit for Hurricane Katrina relief to children in the Gulf area.

Following a flag procession of U.N. members, Musical Director Michael Morgan will conduct members of the Oakland East Bay Symphony in Aaron Copeland’s “Fanfare for the Common Man,” followed by “A Mass for Peace in the Third Millenium” by American composer John Vitz, with a Symphony and Chorus for Peace. David Morales, leading Cantare Con Vivo, will conduct Leonard Bernstein’s “Chichester Psalms,” and Swedish composer Hugo Alfven’s “Aftonen (This Evening).”

New Music/pop ensemble Neo Camerata will play leader/viola player Mark Landson’s “Volkante Heroa (A Hero’s Journey).” The concert will conclude with a sing-a-long of “We Are The World,” led by vocalist Natasha Miller and the assembled concert artists, marking the 20th year of the Lionel Ritchie-Michael Jackson hit anthem.

During the program, Swedish actress Caroline Langerfeld, who starred in TV’s “Nash Bridges” and as Queen Elizabeth in ACT’s Mary Stuart during her five years’ residence in the Bay Area, will read from Dag Hammerskjold’s journals, Markings, an international bestseller after its publication in 1963.

Preceding the concert, at 6 p.m., Hon. Wiilhelm Wachtmeister, former Swedish ambassador to the United States, will present a lecture “Dag Hammerskjold—An Ambassador for Peace.”

Wachtman was Hammerskjold’s assistant, who was originally scheduled to fly with Hammerskjold from Leopoldville in the Congo for talks with Moise Tshombe of separatist Katanga on the plane that crashed near the Katangan border, killing Hammerskjold and 15 others aboard. Wachtmeister’s lecture will be followed by Cantare Con Vivo in a selection of Swedish folksongs.

Noel Cisneros of KRON-TV 4 will act as master of ceremonies. The honorary committee members for the event include Congresswoman Barbara Lee, Assemblywoman Loni Hancock, Oakland Mayor Jerry Brown and Berkeley Mayor Tom Bates. A benefit reception with the artists and dignitaries will follow the concert on the mezzanine of the theatre.

Dag Hammerskjold, the second and most celebrated Secretary-General of the United Nations, is perhaps best remembered for his personal peace missions and negotiations, and for the unusual self-portrait that emerges from Markings, his “sort of White Book concerning my negotiations with myself—and with God,” personal journals meant for posthumous publication.

Born in 1905, the youngest son of a prime minister of Sweden and scion of a family of government officials and military men, Hammerskjold is credited with coining the phrase “planned economy” while undersecretary to the Minister of Finance and head of the Bank of Sweden, during a time when he drafted, with his older brother Bo, undersecretary to the Minister of Social Welfare, legislation that led to Sweden’s ‘welfare state” in the late 1940s-early ‘50s.

Hammerskjold also drew attention as international negotiator, participating in talks leading to the postwar economic reconstruction of Europe, the revised United States-Sweden Trade Agreement, the organization of the Marshall Plan, and Sweden’s declining of membership in NATO.

Avoiding all party membership, even when attaining cabinet rank, Hammerskjold served with the Swedish Foreign Ministry and represented Sweden at the U.N. He was elected as Secretary-General in 1953 by a vote of 57 out of 60 and was re-elected in 1957.

During his years as secretary-general, Hammerskjold established protocols for the Secretariat of 4000 that strengthened its independence from national interests. He personally negotiated the release of American soldiers captured during the Korean War, helped end the military actions of the Suez Crisis of 1956, commissioned the United Nations Emergency Force (the first mobilized by an international agency) with the idea of a U.N. “presence” in world trouble spots.

Hammerskjold directed the establishment of a U.N. Observation Group in Lebanon in 1958, leading to the withdrawal of U.S. and U.K. troops sent there. His “preventive” diplomacy” took him to the Congo, responsible for U.N. peace-keeping forces, and to his death--of which he wrote in Markings, “Tomorrow we shall meet,/Death and I--/And he shall thrust his sword/into one who is wide awake.”

Berkeley Arts Festival will present playwright Wajahat Ali and poets Boadiba, Karla Brundage and Tennessee Reed in a reading by New Voices from the Before Columbus Foundation this Sunday at 4 p.m. at the Arts Festival Gallery, 2324 Shattuck Ave. in downtown Berkeley. Admission is free.

Wajahat Ali, whose impressive first play, The Domestic Crusaders, premiered at Berkeley Rep, presented by Before Columbus Foundation, was born and raised in the Fremont area of Pakistani descent and describes himself as “neither a terrorist nor a saint.” The Domestic Crusaders, a family drama with humor, portrays three generations of a Pakistani-American family in the Bay Area in the wake of 9/11, celebrating a birthday and hearing family secrets revealed.

Ali began writing the play in the fall of 2001 while a student of well-known writer and Before Columbus founder Ishmael Reed at UC-Berkeley. Reed has said of Ali: “I think he stands up there with the best playwrights in the tradition of ‘kitchen table drama.’” Ali, now a second-year law student at UC-Davis, is writing a prequel and sequel to his play to form a trilogy. Involved with making plays, sketches and films since childhood, Ali has also performed improv stand-up comedy.

Boadiba, a poet from Haiti, has had her work published in Beatitude, Quilt, Ishmael Reed’s Konch, Tribes, Gas and Open Gate—as well as in An Anthology of Haitian Creole Poetry. Her new book, Under the Burning White Sky, will be published late this year by Ishmael Reed’s publishing company.

Karla Brundage is a Berkeley native, whose poetry and essays have appeared in Bamboo Ridge, Konch, Hip, Mama, and Oahi Review. Her Multi America: Essays on Cultural Wars and Cultural Peace was published by Viking in 1997, and Adam of Ife: Black Women in Praise of Black Men by Lotus in 1992. She performed with Rhodessa Jones in The Medea Project at San Francisco’s Yerba Buena Center in 1994.

Tennessee Reed was born in Oakland and teaches at Merritt College. She has read in England, The Netherlands, Germany and Japan. Her books of poetry include Circus in the Sky, Electric Chocolate, Airborne and Animals and Others.

“I ran into Ishmael on the street,” said Bonnie Hughes of the Berkeley Poetry Festival, “and asked him what to do about poetry and young people; he came up with this program. He read on Inauguration Day, when we called people to the Downtown BART station, reading ‘Let America Be America Again.’”

Hughes also talked about the Berkeley Arts Festival.

“Every day’s a festival in Berkeley; there’s always something going on of somebody’s particular interest,” she said. “I wanted something that would go on longer than a day—for a month—with many different people, about the different things that makes Berkeley percolate. This way, every year, there’s a glimpse at what’s ongoing in the whole scene, and over time, you can see whole works develop—a whole evening of one person’s music, say, rather than just a little taste of it in a festival setting.”

Hughes added, “Landlords let us use empty storefronts rent-free, and with a volunteer crew, all the money we take in can go to the performers, and we can keep prices low, $10 tops.”

Killing the Dream, Allegiance, More to Pride, The Answer at 8 p.m. at 924 Gilman St. Cost is $6. 525-9926.

SUNDAY, OCT. 23

EXHIBITIONS

“Fermenting Berkeley” An exhibition on the production, sale, and social aspects of alcohol in Berkeley from the 1870s - 1970s. Reception from 3 to 5 p.m. at the Berkeley History Center, 1931 Center St.Exhibit runs to March 25. 848-0181. www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/histsoc/

“When Summa Fell” A reading of the historical drama by Heikki Ylikangas at 2 p.m. at Finnish Kaleva Hall, 1970 Chestnut St. Coast is $5. 849-0125.

Micah Garen and Marie-Hélene Carlton tell their story in “American Hostage: A Memoir of a Journalist Kidnapped in Iraq and the Remarkable Battle to Win His Release” at 7 p.m. at Cody’s Books on Fourth St. 559-9500.

“Panorama Ephemera” A 400-year journey through history and landscape, including scenes of the 1923 Berkeley fire, by Rick Prelinger at 7:30 p.m.at the Hillside Club, 2286 Cedar St. Cost is $5. 527-0450.

Slammin All-Body Band at 8 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square. Cost is $10. 238-9200.

TUESDAY, OCT. 25

EXHIBITIONS

“Breaking the Silence: Israeli Soldiers Speak Out Against the Occupation” Photography exhibit and presentation at 12:45 p.m. at Boalt Hall, UC Campus and at 7:30 p.m. at Berkeley Friends’ Church, 1600 Sacramento at Cedar. Presented by American Friends Service Committee and Jewish Voice for Peace. 415-565-0201, ext. 26.

FILM

Experimental Works from Bay Area Schools at 7:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive. Cost is $4-$8. 642-0808.

READINGS AND LECTURES

Berkeley Arts Festival A reading of Arnie Passman’s play, “Soul Control; Control of Soul” by James King and Allen Taylor at 8 p.m. at 2324 Shattuck Ave. Cost is $5. www.berkeleyartsfestival.com

Clifford Brown 75th Birthday Celebration Trumpet Summit with Arturo Sandoval, Benny Golson, Randy Brecker and many more at 8 and 10 p.m. at Yoshi’s at Jack London Square, through Sun. Cost is $18-$30. 238-9200.

Just because the A’s aren’t playing in this year’s World Series doesn’t mean that there is no joy in Oakland this October.

Just a few miles from the stadium where the Oakland Athletics came up short in their run for the division title this year, the Oak land Museum of California is presenting “Baseball as America,” a traveling exhibit from the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y.

The exhibit tells the story of the intersection between baseball and American culture over the past 150 years, displayi ng 520 artifacts. This is the first time the museum has lent out memorabilia.

The exhibit offers a welcome respite for fans tired of allegations of steroid use. The Bay Area played a large role in the scandal which dominated the sport this year, with the BALCO drug lab trial, leaked testimony by former Oakland Athletic Jason Giambi about his drug use, a tell-all book by his former teammate Jose Canseco, and endless speculation about the drug habits of San Francisco Giants slugger Barry Bonds.

The first room of the Oakland Museum exhibit takes a more celebratory look at Bay Area baseball, filled with memorabilia from the Giants, the A’s and the Oaks, Oakland’s minor league team from 1903 to 1955. After the Oaks left for Vancouver, Oakland was without pro fessional baseball until 1968 when the A’s moved to town.

Two related exhibits accompany the Hall of Fame show at the Oakland Museum. “The Latino Baseball Story: Photographs by Jose Luis Villegas,” features 60 photographs, many chronicling the early yea rs of former Athletics star shortstop Miguel Tejada.

The other exhibit, “Oakland’s Coach: The Legacy of George Powles,” celebrates the famed McClymonds High School coach. Powles coached from 1947 to 1975, mentoring many players who became major league st ars, including Frank Robinson, Curt Flood, and Joe Morgan.

Mark Mederios, acting executive director of the Oakland Museum, said the Bay Area has much to be proud of in its contributions to the game. He singled out Robinson, who became the first African-A merican manager in the major leagues, and Flood, who in 1969 fought a trade to another team, arguing that players shouldn’t be treated as property. His complaint made it to the U.S. Supreme Court in 1972, and although he lost, the case paved the way for t he advent of free agency in 1975.

“Baseball fans and non-fans alike can both come in here and realize that the game is more than wins and losses,” Mederios said. “More than any other sport, baseball has mirrored American history. There have been wars and segregation. Ted Williams fought in the Korean War. After 9/11 there was healing for New York at Yankee Stadium.”

Ted Spenser, curator of the traveling exhibition (Oakland is the ninth stop out of 10), said that to understand how meaningful baseball has been in American life, one need look no further than the oldest and newest artifacts in the exhibit, both of them baseballs.

One of the balls was found by a firefighter in the rubble of the World Trade Center. The other is from the first game where admi ssion was charged. The 1858 game was a benefit for the New York City firefighters.

“No matter where you go in American culture you find baseball,” Spenser said. “There is the good and the bad. The problems of American society have been reflected in baseb all.”

He pointed to a portion of the exhibit displaying a home plate from a internment camp baseball field, an artifact he considers one of the most poignant displays in the exhibit. He said that American culture is as tied to the game today as it ever w as. In fact, he said, the recent controversies show just how passionate the public still is about the sport.

“I don’t believe for a minute that a separation is taking place,” Spenser said. “Baseball is being held much more accountable that other sports h ave been because of the connection that exists, and that produces the backlash. The game has had a rough time, but it will heal.”

Jane Forbes Clark, Hall of Fame board chair and granddaughter of Stephen C. Clark, who founded the Hall of Fame in 1937, sai d the exhibit was not an attempt to defend baseball against criticism that the game is too driven by money to protect its integrity or prosecute steroid use.

“I don’t think there is anything defensive about it,” she said. “The more we looked at our colle ction the more obvious it became how many parallels baseball has to American culture. It relates to everyone’s lives. This exhibit reflects how people in America have always felt about baseball but it has never been articulated before.”

Hall of Famers St eve Carelton, Orlando Cepeda, Juan Marichal, and Joe Morgan, all of who played with the Giants, were on hand for the opening of the Oakland exhibit last month. Morgan, who grew up in Oakland and played for Powles at McClymonds High, also played with the A’s.

Now an announcer with ESPN, he said that he hoped the Oakland exhibit would help fill the many seldom-used diamonds around the Bay Area.

“When you have the baseball history that we do in the Bay Area, maybe this will help bring players back to the f ields here to follow in the footsteps of these men and rejuvenate baseball in our cities,” Morgan said. “When I played as a kid I wanted to be like Frank Robinson.”

But as Morgan hoped for a rebirth of interest in baseball, he said he also realized the s port is in a time of crisis. He said he was concerned that many records have been broken by players suspected of using steroids.

“It’s too late to be concerned about records,” he said. “I am concerned, but we waited too long to care. It’s too late.”

Mor gan said that he recently was talking to Willie Mays about the problem. Mays, a star of the Giants in New York and San Francisco in the 1950s and ‘60s and the godfather of Barry Bonds, said that once the current generation of players retire, the problem w ill disappear.

“Like the ‘Deadball Era,’ maybe we’ll have to say that this is the ‘Steroid Era,’” Morgan said. “They will have to address it someway in Cooperstown in the future.”

Contributed photo: Willie Mays was known to stop for a game of stickball with local youths on his way to and from the Polo Grounds for New York Giants games in the 1950s.

The Oakland Museum of California, 1000 Oak St., is presenting Baseball a s America through Jan. 22. For more information call 238-2200, or see www.museumca.org.

City Commons Club Noon Luncheon with Phillip F. Elwood, “Jazz, Recordings and American Social History.” Luncheon at 11:45 a.m. for $13.50, speech at 12:30 p.m., at the Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant St. For information and reservations call 526-2925.

Where Do All the Leaves Go? Learn about why leaves change color and fall, and other signs of autumn, for ages 7 and up, from 2 to 4 p.m. at Tilden Nature Center, Tilden Park. Cost is $5-$7, reservations required. 525-2233.

Walking Tour of Oakland Chinatown Meet at 10 a.m. at the courtyard fountain in the Pacific Renaissance Plaza at 388 Ninth St. Tour lasts 90 minutes. Reservations can be made by calling 238-3234. www.oaklandnet.com/walkingtours

Groceries from the Garden A hands-on after-school workshop for educators on how sustainable agriculture and locally grown food benefit the health of students and the environment. From 4 to 6 p.m. at UC Berkeley Richmond Field Station, 1327 South 46th St., Richmond. Cost is $20. Registration required. Sponsored by the Watershed Project. 665-3430. www.thewatershedproject.org

Options for Youth in Times of War A counter-recruitment conference Sat. 9:30 a.m. to 7:30 p.m. and Sun. 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. at Valley Life Sciences Building, UC Campus. Free for youth under 25. Donation $10-$25. 268-9006. www.objector.org/moos-bay.html

Alameda Public Affairs Forum with Peter Schrag, discussing “The California Special Election: What are the Issues?” at 7 p.m. at the Home of Truth Center, 1300 Grand Street, Alameda. www.alamedaforum.org

NAACP Life Membership Banquet with Belva Davis and Byron Williams at the Elks Lodge in Alameda. Tickets are $50. 232-2171. 865-1151.

Friends of the Richmond Public Library Booksale from 11 to 3 p.m. in the Community Room adjacent to the Main Library at 525 Civic Center Plaza, Richmond.

The Misty Redwood Run A 10 K fun run to benefit the Bay Area Coalition for Headwaters. Starts at 8:30 a.m. at Redwood Regional Park, Redwood Gate entrance, 7867 Redwood Rd., Oakland. Cost is $20-$25. Register online at www.theschedule.com 548-3113.

Brew at the Zoo a benefit for the Oakland Zoo with live music, animal feedings and behind-the-scenes tours from 6 to 9 p.m. at the Oakland Zoo. Tickets are $30. 632-9525.

Origins of Halloween, Celtic and South American stories at 6 p.m. in Oakland. Cost is $7-$10. Call for location and to reserve a space, New Acropolis Cultural Association, 986-0317.

East Bay Genealogical Society with Marston Watson, the direct descendant of sixteen patriots who served in the Revolutionary War, at 10 a.m. in the Library Conference Room of the Family History Center, 4766 Lincoln Ave., Oakland. 635-6692.

Free Help with Computers at the El Cerrito Library to learn about email, searching the web, the library’s online databases, or basic word processing. Workshops held on Sat. a.m. at 6510 Stockton Ave., El Cerrito. Registration required. 526-7512.

Spirit Walking Aqua Chi (TM) A gentle water exercise class at 10 a.m. at the Berkeley High Warm Pool. Cost is $3.50 per session. 526-0312.

SUNDAY, OCT. 23

United Nations 60th Anniversary Celebration from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. at Jack London Square, Oakland. Peace ceremonies at noon, multicultural dance and music and international foods. 849-1752. www.unausaeastbay.org

Flu Shots for Berkeley Residents age 60 or over or “high-risk” from 9 a.m. to noon, and 1 to 2 p.m. at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 981-5300.

Berkeley Reads Together Free copies of “House on Mango Street” by Sandra Cisneros in English and Spanish will be distributed at 2 p.m. at all Berkeley Public Library locations, while supplies last. 981-6100.

“Watershed Consciousness” A conversation with Michael Rochette, at 5:30 p.m. at Berkeley Public Library, Kittredge at Shattuck. Sponsored by Friends of Strawberry Creek.

Freedom From Tobacco Class from 5:30 to 8:30 p.m. at the South Berkeley Senior Center. Free acupuncture option. 981-5330.

Amazon Gathering: Healing Arts of the Rainforest at 7 p.m. at the Teleosis Institute, 1512B Fifth St. Donation $15. RSVP to 558-7285.

AARP Driver Safety Certification Program from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m., also on Oct. 31, at Jewish Family & Children’s Services, 828 San Pablo Ave., Albany. To register, call 558-7800.

Kensington Book Club meets at 7 p.m. at the Kensington Library, 61 Arlington Ave. 524-3043.

TUESDAY, OCT. 25

Return of the Over-the-Hills Gang Hikers 55 years and older who are interested in nature study, history, fitness, and fun are invited to join us on a series of monthly excursions exploring our Regional Parks. Meets at 10 a.m. at Tilden Nature Area. For information and to register call 525-2233.

Celebrate Halloween with Bats with Maggie Hooper of the Bat Conservation Fund at 6:30 p.m. at the Kensington Library, 61 Arlington Ave. 524-3043.

“Einstein the Peacenik” with Dr. Lawrence Badash, Professor Emeritus, History of Science, UC Santa Barbara, at 7 p.m. at the Florence Schwimley Little Theater, Berkeley High School. Free, all welcome.

Berkeley High School Site Council meets at 4:30 p.m. in Conference Room B in the Admin. Building. On the agenda are Intervention updates (including 10th grade counseling), a discussion of the IB process and timeline and subcommittee sign ups. 525-0124.

Berkeley PC Users Group Problem solving and beginners meeting to answer, in simple English, users questions about Windows computers. At 7 p.m. at 1145 Walnut St. corner of Eunice. All welcome, no charge. 527-2177.

Berkeley Camera Club meets at 7:30 p.m., at the Northbrae Community Church, 941 The Alameda. 548-3991. www.berkeleycameraclub.org

Opinion

Editorials

EDITOR’S NOTE: On Monday morning I sat down at the computer to do my duty by writing an editorial telling our (very few) clueless readers how to vote in the ridiculous special election. Before I wrote it, I checked my e-mail, and mirabile dictu, my friend Kim in Santa Cruz had already forwarded to me this excellent AlterNet piece on the very same topic. I took this as a sign from on high that I could skip my usual two hours of work, since I had nothing to add—except one thing. Here in Greater Berkeley a few of us have a tendency to think we’re so advanced we don’t need to vote anymore, and that our votes might not be counted right anyhow. This one’s different. We don’t just need to win, we need to rack up really big majorities to put Schwarzenegger in his place once and for all. Vote early and often, and tell your friends.

—Becky O’Malley

Daily Planet Executive Editor

Eight initiatives. Hundreds of millions of dollars corralled by interest groups for ad buys to move the voters. And a 77-page voter guide mailed to each California citizen that, while obscure and incomprehensible, communicates in a crisp, bold font that the political process is safely out of their hands.

The Nov. 8 special election in California has been presented by Arnold Schwarzenegger as a way for voters to join him in his revolution for the Golden State; something the Democratic-controlled State Legislature wanted absolutely nothing to do with since he showed up in Sacramento in 2003. So it’s now up to the voters. If they reject the proposals Arnold has backed to the hilt, then it’s a sudden end of a rather unspectacular political career.

The four big ones on which Schwarzenegger has staked his political career are, as Bill Bradley described in L.A. Weekly, a “shrunken agenda of toughening teacher tenure rules (Prop. 74), weakening public-employee unions (Prop. 75), gaining new budget powers (Prop. 76), and taking redistricting out of the Legislature’s hands (Prop. 77).”

Gosh, and you wonder why the Democrats in the Assembly don’t want anything to do with Arnold.

One way of looking at this is that since Schwarzenegger failed to destroy his opposition in the normal political process, he outsourced the battle to the established clique of Republican funders in California. Bob Mulholland, a strategist for the California Democratic Party, told me that “Schwarzenegger is backing initiatives that he and his supporters could never pass in the Legislature.” We’ll see if the people want to have anything to do with Arnold.

There are two progressive initiatives on the ballot as well: 79, which would help folks get discounts on their pharmaceuticals and allows big Pharma to be sued by anyone for profiteering; and 80, which would, to blur its extraordinarily complicated proscription, make the energy market in California better for both consumers and the environment. Prop. 79 is so progressive that drug companies created their own, pseudo-79 initiative, 78, which would make a discount process voluntary for the drug companies to partake in.

Finally, there’s Prop. 73, which would require teenage girls to get consent from their parents before they could have an abortion. The plan is that 73 will do for Schwarzenegger—who is ostensibly pro-choice—what the 18 gay marriage amendments on state ballots did for George Bush in 2004; function as a blooming, fragrant rose that beckons Christian conservative bees to come and vote their Leviticus as they pollinate his corporate agenda.

Breaking it down

Here’s a breakdown of the propositions, with ballot measure “summaries” from that vile 77-page voter guide, and background from research and interviews with activists and public interest groups.

The California Catholic Bishops’ guiding light for their support of Prop. 73 is that their “Catholic Catechism teaches that the family is the ‘privileged community’ wherein children are meant to grow in wisdom, stature and grace. We are also counseled to work with public authorities to ensure that the family’s prerogatives are not usurped.”

Good luck, girls, if you and your parents share different prerogatives.

The key argument “against” Prop. 73 in the voter guide, co-authored by the president of the California Nurses Association, is no on Proposition 73.”

Prop. 74: “Increases probationary period for public school teachers from two to five years. Modifies the process by which school boards can dismiss a teaching employee who receives two consecutive unsatisfactory performance evaluations.”

A misleader if there ever were. The fact is that all California teachers get no guarantee of anything after two years, except for a “right to a hearing before they are dismissed,” as Barbara Kerr of the California Teachers Association puts it. After reading up on this proposition, it looks to me like this effort is an attempt to Wal-Martize the public school teaching profession and create a dispensable and “flexible” employment stream.

Gov. Schwarzenegger’s “Join Arnold” campaign that pushes his four signature initiatives fails to conceal its true goal for 74, weakening the teachers’ union: “Union bosses have blocked many education reforms and just want voters to throw more tax money at education with no reform!” Karla Jones, the 2004 California Educator of the Year, hailing from the worker’s paradise of Orange County, is the shiny buckle on the belt that holds Schwarzenegger’s pants up on Prop. 74.

Prop. 75: “This measure amends state statutes to require public employee unions to get annual, written consent from a government employee in order to charge and use that employee’s dues or fees for political purposes. This requirement would apply to both members and nonmembers of a union. The measure would also require unions to keep certain records, including copies of any consent forms.”

If that language doesn’t get the point across, here’s a simpler one: let’s make it hard for unions to collect money in support of political candidates who might protect them from bastards like Arnold Schwarzenegger. Untold millions have been poured into this one by both sides. And millions were poured into a similar measure in 1998, which was soundly defeated. Columnist Harold Meyerson wrote a great article about 75, saying in effect that it’s a move to help kill the California Democratic Party:

Proposition 75 ... was crafted to sound like a union-democracy issue, requiring public-sector unions to obtain members’ written permission for political spending. In fact, such union members already have the right to withhold their dues for such purposes, and roughly 20 percent of unionized state workers do exactly that. The greater goal of the measure is simply to hamstring unions’ electoral endeavors and thereby remove the linchpin of the Democrats’ mobilization efforts.

But Schwarzenegger has a counter to all this “spin.” He’s dubbed Prop. 75 the “Paycheck Protection Act.” He’s got the Nobel Prize winnin’ economist Milton Friedman on his side, whose longstanding contributions to the CEO-worshipping society we live in still garner moments of silence in Chambers of Commerce across the country. Arnold also dug up a Zell Miller turncoat type to parade around with him: Deputy Sheriff Allan Mansoor, who hails from that gritty, sweat-stained heart of the workers’ movement that Woodie Guthrie sang so often about, Orange County.

This description from the voter guide captures just how profoundly antidemocratic this election is. Why don’t they have jail sentences for the people who write these in such fashion? It’s criminal. Basically, Prop. 76 gives significant power of the purse to the executive branch, and oh yeah, is expected by its opponents to slash funding for public schools by $4 billion. Join Arnold calls it an effort to “stabilize education funding to make sure our public schools are getting the money they need.” Schwarzenegger’s campaign makes no mention of the power grab buried in the legal text.

Here’s the one proposition worthy of some debate. It’s got the support of progressive groups like Common Cause and California Public Interest Research Groups, who argue in essence that party-controlled redistricting is so refined, so insane, that among all 153 of California’s congressional and legislative seats that were voted on in the last election, not one changed parties. There’s obviously something wrong with that.

As Steven Hill wrote for AlterNet, “The 2001 redistricting in California was a travesty. The Democratic incumbents paid $20,000 apiece to the political consultant drawing the district lines—who happened to be the brother of one incumbent—to draw each of them a “safe seat” where they would easily win re-election. It was like paying protection money to a Mafia don for your turf.”

That’s not a functioning democratic system. However, just because there’s something wrong with California’s redistricting laws doesn’t mean this approach is the answer. Although this observation is powerfully obvious, it’s one that the reform groups supporting Prop. 77 must have overlooked. The approach of 77 stinks, as the L.A. Weekly explained in its endorsement list of initiatives: “Under this plan, the district boundaries would be set only after national parties spend millions, perhaps billions, to persuade voters to adopt (or reject) a proposal for district lines. Then the court hearings. Then back to the judges to try again, even though they already submitted their best effort.” Not only this, but 77 establishes that makeup of the judges will be chosen by ... politicians.

Steven Hill offers an alternative, something—gasp!—slightly more radical for California: “If Governor Schwarzenegger and others really want to do something about the ills of redistricting, simply changing who draws the district lines won’t accomplish much. It’s necessary to get rid of California’s antiquated winner-take-all system, and adopt some version of the more modern proportional representation system.”

Prop. 78: “Establishes discount prescription drug program for certain low- and moderate-income Californians. Authorizes Department of Health Services to contract with participating pharmacies for discounts and with participating drug manufacturers for rebates.”

Sounds great. We all want this, don’t we? Once again the evil lurking in this neutral language from the voter guide is overwhelming. Why doesn’t it say that this is a voluntary measure that these drug companies can opt out of? I’ll tell you why. Because the California government isn’t run by you. It’s in someone else’s hands.

When I spoke with CalPIRG healthcare advocate Emily Clayton, she told me that Prop. 78 was born on the day drug companies heard about the proposition that her group and others were working for, 79 (which I’ll get to in a bit). So four companies, including GlaxoSmithKline and Merck, kicked in $10 million each, and another four kicked in $5 million, and by the time the snowball stopped rolling, they had assembled an $80 million war chest. Eighty million dollars for a meaningless initiative, aimed at undermining another one.

As Prop. 78’s opponents point out with a devastating piece of logic, the drug companies don’t need a ballot initiative to establish a voluntary discount system. If it’s voluntary, they could start right now. If drug companies care about discounts for the poor and elderly, as they claim to do, to the tune of $80 million, why haven’t they already?

Clayton told me she was heartened that despite a constant barrage of TV ads, field polls indicated the public understood 78 bad, 79 good. Good thing too, because Prop. 79’s advocates have a shade under $2 million to get their initiative through.

Real help, real savings to “Californians with catastrophic medical expenses who spend at least five percent of their income on medical expenses; the uninsured who earn up to 400 percent of the Federal Poverty Level; Californians on Medicare for drug costs not fully covered by Medicare; Seniors, the chronically ill, and others with inadequate drug coverage through private insurers or their employer.”

The drug companies’ prediction of what will happen if 79 passes, is tell-tale and prophetic: “The measure is so poorly written it will result in years of legal challenges and will never get approval by the federal government.” Read here, we’ll take this to court and spend another $80 million, and if that fails we’ve got friends in higher places who will stomp on California’s laws.

And there’s one more thing about the 78 vs. 79 feud. If both pass with a majority, then the one with the most votes wins, and the other is null.

Last and the most arcane, I actually don’t mind this description offered in the voter guide. Except that the “customers” referred to aren’t you and me, they are huge consumers of electricity, like factories and large corporations. And that opens up a discussion about the fact that some lucky businesses are allowed to “switch” their energy sources while the rest of California isn’t.

After a conversation with Emily Rusch, another CalPIRG advocate, I learned that big corporations in California get to pick and choose the low-hanging volts, while everyone else is stuck with whatever wrinkled electricity provider is thrust upon us. As a result, companies have less of a stake in the quality and efficiency of a particular energy grid, because they can cut and run when the power supply is spotty or less convenient. Prop. 80 also requires energy companies to meet new energy demands with renewable energy resources and higher energy efficiency measures as first options.

A ballot initiative like this one doesn’t begin to lock horns with the fundamental flaws in California’s energy market. But a heavy vote in Prop. 80’s favor will at least signal to Sacramento that energy reform has popular public appeal.

The recent report on diversity on Berkeley’s commissions, which was sparked by Councilmember Kriss Worthington with colleagues Darryl Moore and Max Anderson as allies, will provide food for thought for a long time in the city. I’ve only seen the news accounts, but haven’t read the report myself, or even seen a tight statistical analysis of its data or methodology, so I’m not in a position to comment intelligently on its results per se. But the question of whether students in a college town should be represented on civic bodies in proportion to their numbers in the population is an interesting one which lends itself to a bit of blue-sky analysis.

No one would now argue that student residents shouldn’t be allowed to vote in local elections, but when I was the wife of a graduate student in a Midwestern college town that was taken for granted. When I was a “temporary” resident of Ann Arbor (we stayed 12 years) I argued (and would still argue) that a current student generation represents the class interests of all the students who will come after them, and that’s why they need to vote in local elections. Most places, including Berkeley, have now come around to that point of view. California has ever-tighter restrictions on becoming an official Californian for tuition fee purposes, but at the same time all students who are U.S. citizens can register to vote with no restrictions from the day they move in.

But is that the same as saying that students should have exact percentage representation on all local governing bodies at all times? I’m not so sure. We’re not close to that yet, but should we be working toward it?

Councilmember Worthington, whose district includes most of the younger students who live in the big dorms, is proud of his record in this area: about half of his appointments to commissions have been students. But veteran observers of students’ commission performance are not so sure that the results have been all good. They complain that student appointees miss many meetings, with exams and trips “back home” frequently given as excuses. Students can be tempted to accept appointments because they are a worthwhile notch on post-school resumes, but the tedious work of participation is less attractive. I myself have seen too many student appointees have trouble following the ball at commission meetings because they haven’t done their homework: haven’t read their packets or made the site visits needed for decision-making. I’ve seen others who illustrate the cliché that a little learning is a dangerous thing, who have attempted to cram a real-life situation with local humans involved into paradigms half-mastered from Planning 101.

On the other hand, some of the best work on boards and commissions has also been done by student commissioners. It’s generally accepted that the high school member of the Berkeley School Board (who can’t even vote) is often the liveliest and most intelligent participant in discussions. Student commissioners like Jesse Arreguin have added vigorous independent voices to decision-making. Whatever problems there might be with the wrong students being put on commissions could be remedied by consistently finding the right students.

One of the less desirable consequences of Berkeley’s shift to district elections from at-large elections is that many students are crammed into a couple of council districts. Before district elections, at least one and often more students were elected city-wide. When district boundaries were redrawn a couple of years ago, the council majority made an unsuccessful (and not very intelligent) attempt to create at least one district where students might hope to capture a council seat. If the “progressive” council sincerely wanted to create a student seat, their math was seriously off, and some have questioned their sincerity.

The result in District 8 in the last election was to create a district where the beleaguered progressive long-term residents of the neighborhoods suffering most from university impact were marginalized by the decision of so-called progressives from other parts of town to support a student candidate who was sure to lose. Cynics have portrayed this campaign as a tactic aimed at corralling student votes for their mayoral candidate, with no real desire to elect a student councilmember. Bottom line: both progressive candidates, the student and the neighbor, lost. The most conservative candidate won. But since the mayor has revealed himself to be far, far to the right of the person progressives thought they were drafting, this might have been the plan all along.

Here’s a modest proposal for remedying this sorry state of affairs. How about adding two more at-large councilmembers? This would probably ensure the election of a student voice to the council, since students could pool their votes regardless of where they lived. And with each at-large councilmember appointing commissioners, it would also solve the commission diversity problem.

An incidental benefit of adding at-large councilmembers would to give perspective to the role of the mayor, who under the Berkeley City Charter should be little more than an at-large member with a few ceremonial duties thrown in. Recent incumbents have abrogated to themselves duties not allocated by the charter, like making back-room deals with the biggest local developers about how our city should be redesigned. If mayors were simply one of three at-large councilmembers, it might be harder for them to throw their weight around. Initiative, anyone?